MOST of us will confess to getting a little excited when we hear the letterbox swing open each morning.
Anticipation usually gives way to disappointment, though, when the items strewn across the hall floor turn out to be yet another batch of advertising circulars and credit card applications.
These days, of course, junk mail is not restricted to th
e rip-it-and-bin-it variety. In the virtual world, computer users are bombarded with unsolicited e-mails - or spam - constantly.
For the home PC user, spam may have become an unavoidable nuisance, but for businesses the phenomenon presents a serious headache.
Not only does trailing through individual inboxes deleting superfluous messages eat into precious work time, the sheer volume of junk mail can threaten the stability of servers and office networks.
However, salvation could be at hand for UK computer users as the sort of legal crackdown first seen in the United States makes it to European shores.
Some of the world’s biggest e-mail networks and internet service providers, including Microsoft and Time Warner’s AOL internet arm, have begun to build cases against spammers from a mountain of complaints - and started notching up legal victories.
In December, a German court ordered three firms to stop sending pornographic e-mails to Microsoft’s Hotmail users. And a French court recently issued a cease and desist order on a man who admitted sending 150,000 e-mail offers for an "electric-pliant scooter" to AOL and Hotmail users.
The message for digital peddlers of pornography, printer cartridges and get-rich-quick schemes would appear to be pretty clear then - watch your back, the big boys are out for blood.
The legal clampdown is taking place at a point when the daily flow of spam has surpassed legitimate e-mail traffic.
Compounding the problem, police suspect an increasing number of organised crime gangs are using spamming tactics to defraud online banking customers out of their passwords and banking details or spread computer viruses capable of taking over entire PC networks.
Across the Atlantic, where the fight against spamming has been underway since the late 1990s, dozens of courts have fined spammers and ordered them to close up shop.
Last month, software colossus Microsoft and three other technology giants - Yahoo, AOL and EarthLink - announced they had filed lawsuits against more than 100 people they accuse of sending out countless junk marketing e-mails. The lawsuits, filed in federal courts in California, Virginia, Georgia and Washington state, were among the first to cite the new "Can Spam" - Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing - act that took effect across America on January 4.
The legislation, which was overwhelmingly passed by the US Congress last year, makes it a crime to send junk e-mail using misleading subject lines or false return addresses.
Amid the trickle of successful and pending prosecutions, spam busters are realistic about their prospects for success.
Beatrice Belmas, director of legal and corporate affairs for Microsoft in Europe, says: "Spam is very high on the agenda of most governments. It is a difficult matter to tackle, but we are seeing some progress on this front.
"We cannot wait - our goal is to do as much as necessary to significantly reduce the pain."
Angus MacLeod, a technology expert with the Scottish legal firm Wright, Johnston & Mackenzie, acknowledges the extent of the problem and says technological solutions and legal remedies have to go "hand in hand".
And, pointing to firms who use e-mail marketing for legitimate purposes, he warns that a balance has to be struck.
"The Government says it wants the UK to be the best place in the world in which to do electronic business, but if we’re going to do that we need to make sure that we’re not cutting off our nose to spite our face by over-regulating."
He continues: "The problem with spam in general is that the vast majority of it is generated by a small number of people who are located outwith these shores. Having special legislation here and in the US is all very well but it’s not really going to affect that type of operator.
"The danger if we over-regulate is that we add a burden to those businesses that are really not doing anything intrinsically wrong."
The volume of cases pending across Europe may be on the rise, but before prosecutors can sink their teeth into the Mr Bigs of the spamming world there are a number of legal hurdles to overcome.
Recently, the European Commission threatened to take eight member nations, including Belgium, France and Germany, to the European Court of Justice for failing to implement the EU privacy directive - a wide-ranging law that criminalises the distribution of e-mail to users without their permission.
Spam fighters would like to see new laws incorporate hefty fines and even prison sentences for repeat offenders.
Steve Linford, founder of UK-based spam-fighting group The Spamhaus Project, says: "The problem with fines is that you are dealing with fraudsters. They have no intention of paying."
Spam cases may also be new territory for judges and prosecutors. Microsoft’s Ms Belmas says that although officials are "very interested" in the subject, the software group has often gone to court only to find that judges have never used the internet before.
Many believe that only through international co-operation, and perhaps multi-national treaties, will the global flow of spam be stemmed.
France’s consumer protection council has already begun working with US government agencies, including the Federal Trade Commission, to track down the biggest offenders. In the UK, new rules on Spam came into force towards the end of last year, crystallising the EU privacy directive at a local level. In essence, the rules allow companies to use electronic means to convey unsolicited marketing communications provided they have the individual recipient’s prior consent.
However, Mr MacLeod claims that what constitutes consent is still "a bit of a grey area". He says: "Some people say you absolutely must have an opt-in system which involves putting a tick in a box, yet the UK Information Commissioner says there are other ways of gaining consent, providing a business is up front with someone when gathering their details."
Helena Brown, a solicitor in the technology team at legal giant McGrigors, identifies the crux of the matter when she points out that just 1.3 per cent of all spam originates from these shores, whereas the US is responsible for almost six out of every ten unsolicited e-mails.
She says: "The main problem for the UK is the level of spam received from overseas spammers, and the UK authorities have no power to stop this.
"However, the rise in recent rulings indicates a change in attitude towards spam - everyone is starting to realise that this is a big problem."
At the World Economic Forum’s get-together in January, Bill Gates predicted that unsolicited e-mail would cease plaguing the world by 2006.
Given the almighty challenge still facing the spam busters, those are words that could easily come back to haunt Microsoft’s billionaire founder.
