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From Noel Hodson

Spam now occupies 80 per cent of my incoming email traffic, clogging up my telephone lines, my ISP and the internet (7 February, p 26). Friends report being invaded by ever-increasing numbers of promises of fatter lips, longer penises, larger breasts, other odd products, loans and money-making offers. Yet nobody ever admits to buying any of them, nor indeed even opening the offending emails.

For two weeks I opened all spam – more than 200 adverts, most of them repeats – and copied it all to my ISP. They promised to track down every abuse and punish the spammers severely – but in total secrecy, because the ISP is not allowed (by whom?) to report back to me.

I also tried to order the products. None of the offers was real. None of the adverts carried web or email or postal addresses that worked. None had a mechanism to relieve me of money. None are actually trying to sell anything.

So what is the game? Who benefits from these utterly useless communications?

Oxford, UK