Spam is a modern nuisance, but have you ever wondered how clogged your inbox would get if you clicked on all those offers for breast enlargements, penis enhancements and the chance to share in the obscene wealth of an African prince?

In a unique experiment called Super Spam Me, 50 people from around the world surfed the web unprotected for a month, actively engaging with spammers and heading into the parts of the internet most of us avoid, to find out just how much spam they could attract and what the effect would be.

The results? Brits are amongst the most highly spammed people in the world, the most likely to be the targets of “Nigerian scams” and the most likely after the US to receive spam of an adult nature. In just 30 days, the 50 global participants, received more than a hundred thousand spam messages, about 70 per day.

Participants in the experiment, organised by antivirus software manufacturers McAfee, found that spammers keep trying to find new ways to get us to part with our valuable contact information and cash.

Not all the trick messages people receive are ridiculous suggestions - such as winning millions in an international lottery you didn’t enter in the first place. Some of the most sophisticated spam messages are “phising” e-mails that look entirely legitimate to the naked eye. These are messages in which fraudsters pose as a trustworthy source in order to obtain usernames, passwords and bank account details. The participants in the experiment received seemingly genuine e-mails from the likes of Chase.com, Bank of America, Wachovia.com and eBay, all of which turned out to be difficult-to-spot cons.

One British participant even tracked down one of the spammers to a highly respectable address – 220 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC. Just down the road from the White House.

Simon Nichols, 40, a software developer from Brighton, later found out that the FBI were also on the hunt for the spammers, who used the address as a respectable PO Box required to set up the “premier gold card” website, which offers $5,000 for signing up.

Mr Nichols’s unprotected journey around the web, during which he deliberately took risks like seeking out online Viagra, led him to some more bizarre offers. They included a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity from the supposedly world-renowned astrologist Bethea Jenner.

“What can you do about falling stock prices, the collapse of the housing market, or the fact that the dreaded word recession is on everyone’s lips? The answer is protect yourself with a 24K Gold vermeil Amulet of Ultimate Protection,” read the offer. All of this for the bargain price of $24.99.

“The overriding message from the experiment is that if there is anybody offering anything at all, and it seems too good to be true, then it is,” Mr Nichols said.

The other results from the experiment showed that Brits were likeliest to be targeted by the now infamous Nigerian spam e-mails – where someone from the African country contacts a target to inform them they are the lucky beneficiary of a relative’s will in the hope that they can extract money from them over time. The UK receives almost a quarter of the global total of these e-mails.

Britain is the fifth most spammed country in the world, behind the US, Brazil, Italy and Mexico. The experiment also revealed that spam was evolving globally, and becoming increasingly targeted. What was once a plague primarily in the English language has developed new tongues, with France and Germany receiving the most spam e-mails in languages other than English.

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