SYDNEY: A new study has revealed that spam on the typical social media account has risen 355% in the first half of 2013 as spammers have better chances of going undetected on these sites.

Nexgate's State of Social Media Spam Report revealed that one in 200 social media posts is spam while 5% of all social media apps contain potential of sending spam updates.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the study analysed 60 million pieces of content collected from Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn over a period of two years from 2011 to 2013 and found the increased spam on social networks.

Chief Executive of Nexgate, Devin Redmond said that social spam is becoming a real business for spammers resulting in the increased sophistication and diversification of the mechanisms used to distribute spam, and not just in the increase in volume.

The report said that spam is a 200 million dollar business in Facebook alone, and is delivered via a variety of bots, spam networks and in multiple spam communication types.

The study found that since the biggest strength of the social spam is its reach, only 15% of the spam link can be detected.

Facebook and YouTube have more spam than other social networks analysed in the report and their ratio in comparison is 100 to 1, and Facebook has the highest number of phishing attacks.

The report added that spam represents 70% of all email sent, while Facebook had said in 2012 that only 4 percent of posts are spam.