Receiving a few hundred spam messages a day is bad enough, but spare a thought for an unfortunate Orange user who’s the target of a server-straining 44,000 junk mail missives every 24 hours.

Three of the five most spammed individuals on the books of spam filtering service ClearMyMail.com use Orange as an ISP. The other two received a deluge of unwanted ads through private domains registered with 123-reg/GX Networks.

The most heavily besieged member of the quintet, Colin Wells, a workshop foreman for Stagecoach buses, is sent the equivalent of 16 million spam messages a year.

Dan Field, managing director of ClearMyMail, explained that Wells became the particular target of spammers because he made the mistake of clicking on the unsubscribe links of spam emails when he first started using the account. “That just confirmed that the email address was active allowing spammers to sell on his details to other junk mailers, further increasing the amount of spam he was receiving,