An anti-spam company located in the UK, ClearMyMail, has recently issued a report that reveals how expensive fighting spam can actually be. Dealing with unwanted email messages received by sent by American spammers can cost small or medium-sized companies as much as £4.5 billion in terms of production costs.

The report continued to explain that many employees spent the equivalent of two full work days every year sorting, downloading, reviewing and discarding unwanted spam email messages. With approximately 6 seconds spent per each message received, small enterprises who include up to 10 different email accounts can count on approximately 160 hours of lost work time. Employees end up wasting valuable time trying to sort junk email messages from legitimate ones.

To minimize any work time lost managing spam email messages, the Managing Director of ClearMyMail, Dan Field, has several suggestions. Unwanted emails have increased with the growth and popularity of email programs and the Internet. Utilizing effective anti-spam software at your office, as well as in your home can reduce the problem. Well-protected computers make it harder for spammers to exploit them in order to send unsolicited emails. With less prospective victims to target, these spammers may be forced to adopt more conventional marketing techniques.

A recent analysis was performed by ClearMyMail to determine the countries generating the highest volume of unsolicited emails to Britain. The United States was at the head of the list with slightly less than half of all junk messages originating from that country with Britain, China, France and Germany close behind. At the other end of the spectrum, Japan generated one of the fewest numbers of targeted spam to the UK with less than 3%.

Many other reports from leading security providers such as Webroot have also confirmed the statistics contained in ClearMyMail’s recent analysis. The document entitled “State of Internet Security: Protecting Business Email” revealed that the growing number of malware and junk spam messages received can devastate computer networks in small or medium-sized companies as well as small nations.

Many Facebook users have recently received email messages from apparent “friends” of the site requesting that they resubmit details for a new profile using a provided link. Unsuspecting users are directed to a site that looks very similar to Facebook’s login page after being advised that the “friend” is going to delete the existing account and create a new one. Unfortunately, the domain is actually registered to Namecheap and has absolutely nothing to do with the popular social networking site.

Once individuals resubmit their personal details, they inadvertently grant hackers access to their Facebook accounts. This information is then used to lure in even more people to continue the online scam. Experts warn the public to be very cautious when you receive any messages of this nature, and never release any personal or confidential information if you feel unsure of the legitimacy of the email.

Apparently, this latest Internet scam is not designed to cheat users of their money. However, users are often taken to online pharmacies or websites offering ring tones. This enables the hackers to advertise their products more easily, as well as increase traffic to their websites. This ends up generating more revenue via advertisements and banner ads. Because Facebook profiles contain sensitive information such as home addresses, cell phone numbers, genders and ages, scammers may be able to gain access to bank accounts.

This is certainly not the first time Facebook has become a target for hackers and online scam artists. Previously, fake pages that looked very much like real ones on the site were used to obtain personal user details as well as account passwords.