The number of viruses hitting Irish inboxes has fallen but spam continues to rise, according to figures from IE Internet. The Irish email monitoring firm found that the rate of virus infection in the mails that it filtered for its customers fell to 11.65 per cent in September. This reverses the brief rise seen in August 2006, when the rate of infection rose to 15.15 per cent.

The Mytob virus is still heading the pack, responsible for 40.52 per cent of infected mail, while Zafi.B is in second place, and Netsky.P in third position. However, IE Internet chief technology officer Ken O’Driscoll pointed out that these viruses have been around for some time.