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Everyone hates spam. Well, everyone apart from a small band of prolific and unscrupulous spammers and a handful of desperate recipients who relish an inbox overflowing with offers of penile enhancements, instant weight loss and dubious make-money-fast deals. For the rest of us, the rising tide of digital effluence is a major irritant, obscuring more important emails. Worldwide, spam accounts for 40 per cent of all email, and volumes are rising, according to anti-spam firm Brightmail. ISPs are under pressure to take action against this rising tide.

Not wishing to alienate users, most ISPs have introduced anti-spam software to filter out unwanted messages. AOL now features a 'Nominate as Spam' button. BT and Yahoo! have both held 'anti-spam days', with the latter's Dump the Junk Day in May being fronted by former EastEnder Dean Gaffney, famous for his role as a council refuse collector.

Research carried out in May on behalf of Yahoo! found that 94 per cent of UK internet users consider junk mail hugely annoying, with 56 per cent unwittingly perpetuating the cycle of spam by replying to junk mail. Spammers often trap the public into confirming email addresses are real by offering fake clauses to opt-out of a fake mailing list. The research also showed that more than 25 per cent of users have been fooled into opening junk mail in the belief that it was genuine.

Public antipathy to these repeated intrusions has spawned numerous anti-spam software and services, the best known of which include Brightmail, SpamGuard, SpamNet, SpamCop, SpamAssassin and SpamCatcher. Used in conjunction with blacklists, software can substantially cut the amount of spam that gets through, although nothing is 100 per cent effective.

Unfortunately, such filters may also prevent some legitimate opt-in emails from reaching their target. According to Assurance Systems, a firm that sells products to help email marketers, 15 per cent of opt-in emails do not reach their intended inbox because they are wrongly identified as spam. Speak to any reputable email-marketing agency and they will concede that they've had problems with ISPs blocking opted-in email.

"We've had a situation with one of our clients where certain people complained to them that they didn't get an email they had subscribed to," says Julian Presant-Collins, marketing director at e-relationship marketing (e-rm).

"That was because the ISP picked up an opt-in piece of email as being spam. The ISP was Freeserve and we were able to get the block removed."

"It's a growing problem," agrees Mailtrack's chief executive officer, Guy Marson. "Many filters are a little bit overzealous. I know a couple of companies with spam filters that sometimes have trouble with their own internal mail."

Spam filters work in a number of ways. Most look for words that often come up in spam emails, such as mortgage, sex, adult and free, giving each email a rating based on the likelihood of it being spam. But, of course, this is far from foolproof. Terms such as 'click below' are considered suspect by some packages, although this appears in many opt-in emails as a way of linking customers to sites. Moreover, ruthless spammers seem to stay one step ahead. For instance, instead of using the word 'sex' in their emails, they might use the letters S-E-X with gaps or asterisks between each letter. The message is just as clear for the recipient, but harder for filters to pick up.

Most spam filters analyse not only the message content but also the volume of mailings from an IP address. More sophisticated systems can also identify the IP address so as not to penalise legitimate opt-in bulk mailings.

BT Openworld has introduced an opt-in anti-spam package for its unmetered users, recently extended to PayAsYouGo users for 99p a month. It is run by specialist company Brightmail, which operates one million email accounts that never send out any messages in order to keep an eye on spam developments and optimise the system to catch the miscreants. Spam sent to BT Openworld users is diverted into a junk email folder, which can be accessed by the user, where it is stored for 15 days before being automatically deleted.

Research by the ISP over six days in March this year found that 41 per cent of the emails received by BT Openworld customers were spam. Of more than 25 million emails scanned, nearly 11 million were detected and trapped as spam. "We don't take the view that we could be, or would want to be, censors of the internet," says Nick Hazell, director of online at BT Openworld.

"Some spam may be useful to some people."

This is indeed the dilemma facing ISPs. It's not really for them to judge what users should receive, but at the same time most evidence, statistical and anecdotal, points to the fact that most consumers are peeved at spam.

Yet, as Mailtrack's Marson puts it: "One man's spam is another man's mercy mail."

ISPs do, however, have a commercial interest in clamping down on junk email. With spam accounting for a large and still increasing proportion of email traffic, it can put a strain on the infrastructure of ISPs, who don't want to pay for ever-larger pipes just to accommodate bulk mail that hardly anyone wants. This, taken together with user attitudes, ensures that ISPs will continue to invest in anti-spam software and systems.

Corporate and home-user firewalls also provide a defence against spam, but sometimes ensnare legitimate commercial email. EMF Systems, which supplies an outsourced anti-spam service for corporate clients such as Fujitsu, says it has noticed a marked increase in spam this year. Managing director Neil Hammerton says that before Christmas spam represented 30-40 per cent of traffic on its servers, whereas a recent snapshot put it at a staggering 51.7 per cent. He is quick to point out that this figure is a little distorted from the global average by virtue of the fact that the kind of firms prepared to pay for EMF Systems' services are those that already have a significant spam problem. But that doesn't alter the fact that there has been a "very big increase" in the past six months, he adds.

So what does this mean for the bona fide email marketer? With ever more email about and ever more steps being taken to stop it getting through, life is surely becoming more difficult?

"There are steps that responsible e-marketers can take to distance their communications from spam," says Martin Kiersnowski, chief operations officer of Interactive Prospect Targeting, parent firm of permission-based marketing firms MyOffers and OK-mail. "This entails following best practice by using opt-in lists, clearly identifying themselves, and providing easy and effective 'unsubscribe' functions," he adds. "Rogue list owners pass themselves off as permission-based when their lists have been collected using opt-out and they send messages from advertisers indiscriminately. Responsible marketers must learn to distinguish between genuine and unscrupulous suppliers."

In the US, where spam has reached epidemic proportions and shows little sign of abating, a group of 30 companies, called the Email Service Provider Coalition, is working to develop a new way of tackling unwanted email.

On 23 April, ESPC unveiled what it describes as a blueprint for a technical architecture to eradicate spam. Codenamed Project Lumos, the initiative is a registry-based model. ESPC claims it will stop high-volume mailers concealing their identities, but will still allow certified above-the-board email marketers to carry out their business.

Project Lumos addresses four important elements of accountability in an effort to sideline spammers. First, certification: a verification process ascertaining the mailer's identity to ensure transparency. Second, volume mail standards: standardisation of all sender information in the mail header, including the use of an identifiable, trackable, web address that can be used for unsubscribing. Third, secure identity: authentication, giving secure proof of sender identity in the SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol) header. And performance monitoring: capturing, monitoring and reporting this data for all mailers.

UK marketers should keep an eye on Project Lumos; if it is workable, a similar model could be introduced over here. At E the same time, marketers are keeping an eye on the regulatory situation.

The DTI has been seeking comments on its draft regulations for the EU Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive. Direct marketing trade body, the DMA, has aired its concerns with the DTI that there should not be a general ban on bulk email by ISPs. There is also every indication that while the legislation will outlaw unsolicited email, it will permit opt-in.

Yet legislation, no matter how well-intentioned and enacted, is unlikely to put off the most ardent spammer. "Many operate from God knows where and don't give a hoot about what the EU says," says Justin Anderson, managing director of email marketing firm Frontwire. "So the only way we're going to address this is via a technical solution." When developing emails for clients, Frontwire tests them against SpamAssassin to see if any of the content could be accidentally flagged up as spam - a 'false positive', to use the jargon. Anderson says email marketing agencies and clients have to work at making sure their digital communications are not erroneously lumped in with junk email by paying close attention to the formulation of content.

Presant-Collins agrees that marketers need to think a lot harder about email content. As an example, he says firewall software able to identify flesh tones as a means of stamping out the transmission of pornography, could have implications for travel companies were they to send an email containing a picture of a girl on a beach in a bikini; it could be blocked.

Relationships need to be forged with companies providing anti-spam software, though there can be hurdles. Jonathan Williams, digital marketing manager at Auto Trader, which regularly communicates with customers via email, says: "Spam software providers keep filtration policies close to their chest as they don't want spammers cracking them. Unfortunately, legitimate firms sending out permission-based emails are also being snubbed. Spam software providers and email-marketing agencies need to work closer together to make sure users are relieved of spam but not the emails they want."

There also needs to be greater dialogue between ISPs and email-marketing agencies, argues CRM company Experian's head of e-commerce, Phil Singh.

"The key is to liaise with the ISPs. We have to make sure they know what we do."

Given that spammers are succeeding in getting their messages across, are legitimate marketers tempted to copy their techniques? It may be playing devil's advocate to ask, but are there any benefits to be had from flouting best practice? Professional marketers recoil in horror. "It's very bad practice to try to do what spammers do - it's the road to ruin," says Marson. "They take advantage of insecure machines, hopping around IP networks, and use all sorts of cloak-and-dagger techniques."

"Spammers are getting smarter," warns Jeff Barnes, vice-president of email marketing agency Bluestreak International. "The most common trick is to have a subject that sounds legitimate, such as 'Latest Updates for Download'," he points out. "These are infuriating and email marketers should steer clear of unspecific subject titles. The worst is the spoof email address, where it appears that email has come from someone in your organisation. Spammers can use non-secure servers to send messages and mask the sender's address with a false address. Real marketers should never do this."

While spammers can hack and scram, using a potentially infinite number of email addresses, legitimate marketers send in bulk from a fixed domain.

If their behaviour were to be questioned, the domain could be added to the rising number of spam blacklists, with dire consequences for future campaigns. The most well known is the Realtime Blackhole List, set up by the Mail Abuse Prevention System to limit the transport of known-to-be-unwanted mass email. Most legitimate email marketers approve of them and support their opposite: whitelists. These hold information on email marketers who agree to abide by best practice, which is shared across the industry as a means of ensuring responsible communication. Whitelists are expected to develop, possibly into something more far-reaching.

"Marketers need to take a responsible attitude to their email marketing strategies and avoid being tarnished with the spam brush in the first instance," says David Clark, managing director of email bulletin firm emedia. "True email marketing must be subject to the same rigorous profiling, segmenting, targeting and measurement placed on traditional direct mail.

Spam filters are there to filter out spam. True email marketing should not be confused with spam. This needs to start from the beginning when creating an email-marketing database. By ensuring everyone has opted-in to your approaches, you are taking big steps to ensure your campaign doesn't fall at the first hurdle."

Bluestreak's Barnes sees the way forward in supporting industry standards like the DTI Directive or the DMA as a governing body. "The creation of whitelists for approved email marketers would enable spam filters to manage the flow of material to recipients. Certification for legitimate email marketers would prove to ISPs and governing bodies that they're not spamming.

Let's face it, the real problem isn't legitimate business email marketers, but the firms using email sniffer programs to create databases and send any content to any email address - the definition of marketing doesn't come into their activities."