Angelina Jolie is queen of spam

With apologies to Helen of Troy, Angelina Jolie appears to be the face that has launched a thousand ships worth of spam on the internet.

The American actress was the most successful bait used by spammers last month in a global outbreak of celebrity-based junk messages online, which put computers at risk of being remotely controlled when a certain Web link is clicked, according to a survey made by United States-based Secure Computing Corp, an international supplier of computer security software and services.

'On average, about 2.28 per cent of the total global e-mail volume contained subjects like 'Angelina Jolie naked', 'Angelina Jolie nude' movie, and 'Angelina Jolie naked video',' the company reported.

It identified that about 100,000 unique internet protocol addresses were responsible for the spam, but did not say in which countries these were found.

Another internet security survey, meanwhile, found Hong Kong had been unseated as 'the most spammed city in the world'.

A report from British e-mail security services provider MessageLabs said the spam rate in Hong Kong fell to 80.7 per cent [of all e-mail sent] last month to drop the city to third place behind Switzerland (84.2 per cent) and Austria (80.9 per cent).