A BBC programme which aims to help safeguard people against IT security breaches may have broken the law.

The BBC Click show tackles the issue of botnets, which can be used by hackers.

During the documentary its host, Spencer Kelly, obtains and uses a botnet, resulting in spam and denial of service attacks.

However, critics have claimed the broadcaster was wrong to carry out the stunt, those in the IT security field may be interested to hear.

Struan Robertson, a technology lawyer, said: "The BBC appears to have broken the Computer Misuse Act by causing 22,000 computers to send spam."

As part of the programme, the BBC sent thousands of emails to two email accounts created specifically for the experiment and subsequently destroyed the trojan botnet afterwards.

Recently, a study by Iain Moir and George Weir, which is due to be published in the International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics, claimed that hackers could target contact centres when trying to obtain sensitive information.

A recent survey for Connect found that one in ten companies has lost important data as a result of a backup failure. The company has now developed a unique online backup service for SMEs to ensure they can survive any disaster.