There's only one Act of Parliament that deals with unsolicited mail: the Data Protection Act 1998. Section 11 of the Act gives you the right to demand an organisation doesn't process your personal details for 'direct marketing' purposes. Apart from that the industry is self-regulating, which in practice means junk mailers make up the rules as they muddle along.

As far as scam mail is concerned Government doesn't have any plans to curtail scam mail. In early 2011 Caroline Nokes MP sponsored a Private Members' Bill aimed at amending the Postal Services Act 2000. Her proposal was to allow Royal Mail to intercept mail in cases where it has sufficient grounds to believe that [a mail shot] constitutes part of a mass marketing exercise designed to defraud the recipient. The parliamentary session ended before the second reading in the House of Commons, and so the bill failed to make its way through Parliament.

Unsolicited text messages are covered by the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003. The Regulations are fairly strict. Organisations can't send you marketing messages via text unless:

• the sender has obtained your details through a sale or negotiations for a sale;
• the messages are about similar products or services offered by the sender; and
• you were given an opportunity to refuse the texts when your details were collected and, if you did not refuse, you were given a simple way to opt out in all the text messages you received.

Only if all three conditions are met are text messages legitimate. That said, there's little evidence the Regulations are being enforced. The problem is that senders are often difficult to identify and/or based abroad. You can complaint about junk texts to the Information Commissioner's Office (the body enforcing the Regulations) but unless you can identify the sender they won't be able to help. Tellingly, the Information Commissioner's Office currently wants the public to tell them about spam texts by completing a survey [ Link to the survey removed as it has now ended – JB ]. The aim is to learn more so we can find those responsible.