Government wakes up to spam problem

Conservative estimates suggest that spam makes up around 30 to 40 per cent of all email traffic. Anybody with a Hotmail account or an email address in the public domain would be forgiven for thinking it's actually a lot higher.

The government today announced that this is a problem - you don't say - and has decided to act. So what will this mean for the average email user?

In truth, it will probably mean very little.

One of Ecommerce Minister Stephen Timms' planned changes to the law is to demand companies obtain prior permission from individuals before emailing them. So no more cold calling, no more unsolicited mail - sounds too good to be true. Of course, as with "a bigger penis in days" or "your chance to make millions working from home", that's because it is.

As any responsible marketing manager will tell you, this is going to make very little difference. Genuine firms, fearful of criminal prosecution and subsequent damage to their reputation will play by the rules - and lose out on sales. You may have little sympathy for them, but they were never really the enemy of the piece.

The real story is that responsible companies are massively outnumbered by those who've known all along they are breaking the law and will continue to do so, flooding random email boxes with their offers. US pornographers won't have heard of Stephen Timms. Mr Madu Frank, offering you a share of $27m in return for your help getting that money out of Nigeria, won't care what the UK government has said, and anybody offering natural Viagra isn't about to stop touting it because of the rhetoric of Whitehall.

Stephen Timms may well know spam is a "curse on the internet", but it appears to be a curse he's no closer to exorcising.