In what would make a good Monty Python sketch, Britons are drowning in a huge tidal wave of spam.

According to figures from uSwitch, some 82 million spam emails are received by UK internet users every day, with millions of users not knowing the most secure way to deal with these threats.

"Spam has become the great bug-bear of the internet age," said uSwitch's head of communications services, Steve Weller.

"Unfortunately, as we've become more dependent on our internet connections, so spam has spiralled to epidemic proportions."

He also noted that spam has infiltrated the world of text messages, with 16.6 million mobile phone users being pestered by unwanted spam text messages.

Spam emails, which often offer to sell cheap versions of drugs like Viagra, can leave internet users open to viruses and malware.

Businesses and individuals need to ensure they have the right kind of IT support in place to deal with it, and outsourcing is a good way to do this.

In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were 'guaranteed response times' and 'allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues'