A huge global botnet responsible for sending out millions of spam messages each day has been shut down by a collaborative effort from security experts in the US, Britain and Russia, researchers say. The so-called Grum botnet, which uses a network of infected computers to automatically generate emails, has now finally been neutralised.

Robert Schifreen, former computer hacker and internet security consultant, said that Grum "was responsible for 18 per cent of spam worldwide" and receivers of spam will notice the reduction for a couple of weeks.

He added that the spammers will set up elsewhere because "there is money in it and central servers are hard to track down".

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