There’ll be a 40 per cent increase in email spam in September, thanks to spammers perfecting their new techniques, and things are only going to get worse according to the email security firm SoftScan.

They believe that many spammers will target students returning to colleges and universities, because they have the potential to connect unprotected laptops to large, fast, educational networks which may themselves be poorly secured.

SoftScan say that a typical student’s surfing habits — careless use of the Net, including spending a long time in chat rooms and playing online games — makes them the perfect target. Their shiny new laptop may already be part of a “botnet” before being connected to a college’s network.