Dawlish News

Spam – It’s the stuff that clogs up your inbox in the hope of selling you anything from the latest money spinning tool to plastic surgery.

It's considered the biggest downside to the internet revolution.

90% of unsolicited email is from 200 spammers.

50-70% of email traffic across the world is spam.

Healthcare products - mainly Viagra - accounted for nearly half of all the spam received in our inboxes in November.

The Government is cracking down on nuisance spammers. From today it's a criminal offence to send cyber junk to home computers. Unless the recipient has agreed to receive it in advance.

But there are a couple of exceptions to what initially appears to be a hard-hitting new set of rules.

Businesses are not protected. Spam can still bombard company inboxes - as long as it has an opt-out clause inside it. Businesses say the cost of spam hasn't been addressed.

This time last year 17 per cent of all emails were junk - Now more than half of the emails we receive are spam

If spammers break the law - they could face a maximum fine of £5,000.

Sarah Kidner from the Consumer’s Association, said: “It's more than a nuisance really. I mean it is getting to the point now where people think that the amount of spam that's being sent could actually crash e-mail systems.

“And also it's the content of the spam - a lot of it comes with pornographic content which your kids could open if they go in and they find a spam message they could open that.

They're selling drugs as well, they're touting Viagra, they're touting slimming pills et cetera, and a lot of them are scams as well, you click on it and it might take you to a website and you think you're buying something but what they're actually doing is getting your credit card details and ripping you off.”

The new laws only apply to spam sent within the European Union. But since research suggests that 90% of Britian's spam is from overseas, and most of that is from the United States - It seems that today's legislation is just a small step to conquering a far bigger problem.