South Hampshire stands out as being home to one of Britain's spam centres, Petersfield, where businesses received an average five times more spam as nearest regional rival Portsmouth.

But bottom of the entire UK list was Fareham, where businesses received just two junk e-mails each day.

The figures, compiled by internet security giant MessageLabs, worked out the average received per employee in firms which use their filtering service.

Top of the list was Egham, Surrey, with 189 per day, followed by 167 in Alton, Hampshire.

Petersfield came in at number three in the whole of Britain, with a colossal average of 116 emails dumped on each employee every day, against just 20 for Portsmouth, 13 for Chichester, and 10 for Havant.

This is in stark contrast to the two per day received by Fareham staff.

But, said senior analyst Paul Wood, the spammers did not target areas by geography, but by type of business.

He said: 'In terms of the types of business in Fareham and in Petersfield, they're quite different demographically. If you look at Petersfield it'll be more educational establishments, professional services and public sector, which are heavily targeted.

'Small to medium businesses, up to about 200 staff, can sometimes try and run their own solutions to a problem before they call us.

'Of course, once their e-mail address is on a spammer's list it is quite difficult to get it off.

'In Fareham you have more retail, recreation and manufacturing, so the amount of spam you usually get depends on the type of business you're in.'

He warned the sophistication of spammers was growing, with even once-foolproof Captcha technology, requiring a human to identify a blurred series of letters and type them in, now 'virtually useless' against fraudsters.