Over the past year, the problem of electronic spam, the unsolicited bulk e-mails that inundate your inbox, has gotten considerably worse.

According to a recent New York Times article entitled “Spam Doubles, Finding New Ways to Deliver Itself,” spam volumes have more than doubled worldwide from last year. Ironport, a spam filtering firm, found that unsolicited junk mail now accounts for more than 9 of every 10 e-mail messages sent over the Internet.

Much of the increase in spam can be attributed to a new breed of junk e-mail called image spam, in which the words of the advertisement are part of a picture, often fooling traditional spam detectors. According to the New York Times and Ironport, image spam increased fourfold from last year and now represents 25 to 45 percent of all junk e-mail worldwide.

Fighting spam requires a delicate balance between stopping spam from getting to users’ mailboxes and making certain all business-related messages get through to the proper team member.

According to Susan Minor, a senior network administrator at TG in Round Rock, TX, the fact that schools and financial aid offices deal with “unknown entities” in the form of students and parents also creates problems.

“Many times people send casual messages that contain graphical elements like emoticons, graphic wallpaper, or other images that are tagged as spam and quarantined,” says Minor.

Currently, worldwide spam rates are at 90 percent. In the same New York Times article, several of the top anti-spam vendors admitted that presently spammers have the upper hand. “It’s a constant battle between spammers and anti-spam vendors, and right now the spammers are winning,” says Minor. “The vendors are always playing catch-up to fight the latest spam techniques.”