Leader: UK soft on spam

The UK government is embarrassingly soft on spammers.

By its own admission, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is requesting stronger powers to tackle spammers and stop them sending unsolicited email.

Some reports say the ICO has received 600 complaints of spam over the last year but others say only 300 of those are 'actionable'. But what does 'actionable' really mean?

The ICO's current version of 'action' is to write to naughty spammers and kindly ask them to remove any email addresses of those who complained - a strategy that's unlikely to deter spam kings, to say the least.

Unsurprisingly, this is having little effect and spammers continue to rake in the cash from Viagra, porn and fraudulent mortgage emails. As a result, Spamhaus, one of the world's most active anti-spam campaigners, has said the UK is one of the safest places to send spam.

This is a difficult fact to swallow. The UK is one of the eight strongest economies in the world - yet all it can do when it comes to stopping spammers is pass the buck to ISPs. And while some UK ISPs do their part to prevent spammers from sending messages over their systems, it clearly hasn't solved the problem.

The ICO seems proud that it has been "successful in enforcing regulations" against 13 fax marketers, a fact silicon.com discovered through a Freedom of Information Act request. This is certainly fuzzy wording but does not hide that the ICO has still brought no action against spammers.

Spam in the UK could be stopped if the government took a leaf out of the Australian law book and made spamming a finable offence. Spamhaus and a number of other anti-spam organisations have noticed a significant reduction in the amount of spam sent from Australia since it imposed fines of AUS$22,000 per day or a maximum sentence of five years in jail for anyone who sends spam.

It seems like common sense to do this, so the question is, why not here?

The UK government has fallen behind on anti-spam legislation because it is unable to keep pace with technology and its exploiters.

It's simply not good enough. The situation is costing businesses thousands of pounds in lost bandwidth and time. The UK must do more to stop spam - and soon.