Is there such a thing as good spam?

Unsolicited bulk mail – it's the much-hated, ever-present bane of the internet age, or so goes the theory. But according to new research it seems a surprising amount of people are coming round to the idea, with those on the receiving end saying that they're more than happy to see unrequested email dropping into their inboxes – as long as it's interesting.

When it comes to spam, UK consumers want to have their cake and eat it: unsolicited mail is acceptable, according to 50 per cent of the IT managers surveyed by spam filter company SurfControl, if it's relevant to their jobs – and, more importantly - as long as it comes with the proviso that they could equally block the messages that are offensive or unrelated irrelevant. Top of the spam hate list is porn, with 68 per cent rating it as their least favourite inbox visitor.

Although the survey also shows that around 40 per cent of businesses still don't have any anti-spam measures in place, the question of spam filtering is becoming a thorny one for legitimate email marketers. As the amount of spam traffic rises – analyst house Gartner puts it at 50 per cent of all email this year and forecasts 60 per cent for 2004 - and spam filters improve correspondingly, filters could block up to 80 per cent of legitimate marketing by 2005.

Having genuine marketing blocked from potential customers at the hands of over-enthusiastic spam filters is now an important concern for business. Alan Lawson, research analyst at Butler Group, warns that email marketing could "very easily be killed off" by "being tarred with the spam brush".

But while technology may see spam and marketing as very much the same thing, Lawson believes that genuine businesses are unlikely to be scared off and jettison email as an advertising channel just yet.

"Businesses don't associate their images with [spam], they believe they've got a legitimate message and so they're not spamming people. They don't realise that the end user might have a very different perspective," he told silicon.com.

The conflict between legitimate email marketing and spam is one that the government is recognising with its new anti-spam laws. Only personal email accounts will be covered by the legislation - it will still be legal for a company to send unsolicited commercial messages to corporate email addresses.

According to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), this decision was taken so that "legitimate business-to-business communication" is not hampered. This may be little consolation to UK workers who find their inboxes full of adverts for pills, debt-relief plans and supplements for "physical enhancement" but the DTI insists that during its recent consultation on the EU directive many businesses said they didn't want to lose email as a marketing tool.

However, such an altruistic move may not go down well with the public – 79 per cent of those questioned by SurfControl said they think it is the government's responsibility to tackle the spam issue.

Graeme Wearden contributed to this report.