Following a slight lull in recent months, spam levels rose dramatically during June to account for more than 90 per cent of all sent emails, according to new statistics.

Last month, internet security firm SoftScan recorded the highest ever percentage of emails classified as spam during the weekends. The staggering rate of 96.55 per cent marginally beat February's record of 96.22 per cent. Spam levels during week days peaked during the month at 91.26 per cent.

Meanwhile, the number of emails containing viruses fell to just 0.6 per cent, due mainly to a lack of major outbreaks and low levels of phishing activity.

Commenting on the few days in June when spam levels fell as low as 86 per cent, Diego d'Ambra, chief technical officer of SoftScan, said this was likely just due to a lack of spam customers on those days.

"Changes in spam levels normally signal one of two things, either a change in tactics or more likely in this case, a drop in customers buying spam lists," he explained.

"Unfortunately, I don't believe that this signifies a change for the better since the overall trend is so high. Like any other business, apparently spam shops also suffer poor trading days."

Research for Connect in 2007 found that 88 per cent of UK businesses were interested in Disaster Recovery systems primarily to protect their critical applications and data.