Spam levels have hit their highest level in over a year, with a new study finding that it now accounts for around 85 per cent of all emails sent in the world.

MessageLabs revealed in its Intelligence: April 2009 Report that the jump also marks a nine per cent rise on last month's figures, with much of the rise being attributed to the exponential growth in popularity of picture spam, where a jpeg or gif is used instead of text.

In the UK alone, spam levels rose by 25.6 per cent in April, making it the most spammed country in the entire world, with 94 per cent of emails estimated to be filled with fraudulent sales activities or viruses.

US spam rose to 79.4 per cent, with Germany hitting 83.3 per cent and the Netherlands registering 78 per cent.

Many are attributing further rises as a result of the swine flu stories flashing up around the world, with fake online pharmacies springing up in inboxes across the globe.

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.