The scourge of spam has spread to mobile phones, with Britons being bombarded by more than one million unwanted text messages every day.

A report from uSwitch.com, the consumer website, also showed that security groups are losing their battle with the criminal gangs behind conventional e-mail spam.

Nearly 82 million junk electronic messages – ranging from offers of counterfeit Viagra to “pump and dump” scams for penny shares – are getting through filters daily. The figure, equating to nearly 1,000 spam e-mails a second, is up 20 per cent from last year.

The appearance of mobile phone spam follows a warning from McAfee, the security group, that junk mail sent to mobile handsets is set to “explode” as hackers target new web-enabled smartphones.

Among the new mobile threats McAfee expects to blossom are “phishing” messages and other spy-ware angled at handsets and designed to steal personal data such as banking details.

Spit – or spam over internet telephony – is also becoming a problem on Skype and other internet voice services, it added. In recent weeks there has been a rash of fresh warnings over the rising amount of spam.

MessageLabs, the antivirus group, reported that malicious e-mails have reached levels not seen for two years. A virus threat is incorporated in one in every 48 e-mails, it said.

Sophos, another web security group, issued an alert highlighting that 25 per cent of London-based Facebook members have revealed information relating to their work through the social networking site.

Sophos said the information included “details that could potentially be used by cyber-criminals in their attempts to commit corporate ID fraud or to infiltrate company networks”.

Ironport, another security group, suggests that 80 per cent of e-mails are spam.

The authors of the uSwitch report said that a “lackadaisical attitude towards spam among consumers” is largely to blame. It is estimated that at least 1.4 million computers are completely exposed to attacks.

The same casual attitude is blamed for Britain rising up the ranks of the world’s “spam haven” nations – countries from which spam messages are sent.

The UK is in fourth place for spam output, up from seventh last year.

The lion’s share of the world’s spam is sent by organised groups of criminals who trade blocks of “zombie” computers – home or corporate machines that are taken over remotely and used to send rogue e-mails.

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