Fears over new junk emails law
Opening your email each morning can be a depressing affair. Among the adverts for porn sites, drugs and dating services, you might find a real email. It is estimated we will spend a week of our working lives deleting unwanted messages.
Help is supposedly at hand. Tomorrow new legislation comes into effect making it illegal to send unsolicited junk email - known as "spam" - and promising heavy fines for offenders in a bid to cut down the amount of junk in our inbox.
The reality, experts agree, is that the new law is "totally crippled" and will have no effect on junk email. Crucially it only applies to junk mail being sent from the UK.
Steve Linford of anti-junk company Spamhaus, said: "Almost all spam is sent from outside the UK, and to put a maximum fine of £5,000 on this is insane. Given [spammers] can make £250,000 a year, it's a small price to pay."
About 10 million junk emails are understood to be sent every day. It is believed as people give out their email details while using the internet for Christmas shopping and to send emails to relatives, this number could increase.
Roger Dean, of the European Forum for Electronic Business, said: "Our research has found on average people get 100 spam messages a day, which is costing companies dear in terms of lost productivity."
Mr Dean believes the Government ought to be targeting the spammers directly. "I think it's unrealistic to think we can stop spam altogether but what we hope to do is control it. Ninety per cent of the spam in the world is sent by a group of around 200 people. Even if only a tiny proportion of recipients actually send money, they are still making a very good living."
Earlier this year, the virus Sobig-F - which generates junk emails - brought the internet to a virtual standstill when an estimated 22 million accounts contracted it.
