Anyone with an email account can attest to getting spam or unwanted email messages but a new report from Symantec illustrates just how bad the problem has become.  90.4 percent (1 in 1.11) of global email is now spam.

“Spammers seem to be working a little bit harder these days, according to Symantec, which reported Tuesday that unsolicited e-mail made up 90.4 percent of messages on corporate networks last month.

That represents a 5.1 percent increase over last month’s numbers, but it’s nothing out of the ordinary. For years, spam has made up somewhere between 80 percent and 95 percent of all e-mail on the Internet.

Symantec reported that nearly 58 percent of spam is now coming from so-called botnets –networks of hacked computers that can be misused by criminals to steal financial information, launch attacks or send spam. The worst of the spamming botnets — called Donbot — generates 18.2 percent of all spam, according to Symantec.” 90 percent of e-mail is spam, Symantec says, May. 26, 2009 computerworld.com

Download the full MessageLabs Intelligence May 2009 report (pdf).