Spammers to pay 30p per email

The Singaporeans have opted for a no-nonsense approach to stopping spam – they're going to make spammers cough up for each and every piece of junk mail they send.

Under new regulations proposed yesterday, for every piece junk email sent, the fine would be between a few pence and one Singapore dollar – a maximum of about 30p. It's thought the spam problem costs Singapore about $23m a year in lost productivity.

Unfortunately for Singapore's spam fighters, the country has the same problem with its spam that the UK does – most of the junk email comes from overseas, making the legislation not very likely to have an overall effect on the volume of spam entering the country.

Anti-spam legislation has become de rigeur for governments around the world of late, with little success.

Since the US' Can-Spam Act came into force, the volume of spam has grown to 64 per cent of all email, according to anti-spam firm Brightmail.