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However, children and pornography are not a good mix, and the law knows it.

As a result, significant resources are being poured into identifying and prosecuting those who deal in child pornography, with what appears to be some stunning success of late.

Teachers, members of the clergy, policemen and many other seemingly "respectable" people appear amongst the ranks of the thousands who have been caught red-handed thanks to the efforts of our boys in blue.

But what about those pornographers who seem able to be able to ply their trade with seeming immunity from prosecution?

What am I talking about?

I refer to the nasty sods who send out hundreds of millions of bulk emails every month pitching hardcore pornography sites to whoever happens to receive them.

As an adult, I can tollerate this garbage -- but why should parents have to put up with a situation that sees these same emails polluting the mailbox of their eight or nine-year-olds?

Readers Say (updated irregularly) Email Porn... - Lindsay Short term solution... - Michael Speaking of spam... - Richard Webmail spam-blocking... - Richard Have Your Say

Now it strikes me that if some guy went around town handing out leaflets promoting hardcore porn to everyone regardless of their age, he'd be rounded up and thrown in the pokey double-quick.

So is this type of behaviour going unchallenged on the Net?

The only defense against ads for, and links to, hardcore porn appearing in your children's email box seems to be the use of complex filtering software and I'm sorry but I don't think it's good enough.

While it's obvious that forcing children to engage in sexual acts must obviously cause immense damage, I doubt that anyone with half a brain would argue that exposing kids to pictures of adults engaged in naked acts of S&M or other similar activities can be anything but harmful too.

In fact, there is a growing weight of evidence that early exposure to this type of material can, according to this story, "lead them to violent sexual behaviour"

Let's be quite clear here -- we're not talking about happy nudists frolicking innocently in fields of daisies, we're talking about emails that promote just about every type of unusual sexual activity known to man (and a few that I'd never heard of).

A quick check of my mailbox, which is by most standards fairly spam-free, indicates that I get around 4-5 of these hard-core solicitations a week and I suspect that people, a lot of who are just kids, with Hotmail accounts get far more.

But when was the last time you heard of one of these porno spammers being dragged through the courts for attempting to pervert a minor?

Is it too hard to track them down and prosecute them? I hardly think so -- especially considering the nature of their crime.

Perhaps it's time to ask the question -- which is more harmful to our kids: some sad old man who downloads a few pictures of naked children from a chat-group, or some slick-willy who sends millions of kids emails that invite them to visit websites which offer "limited free access" to material that is definitely Adults Only in nature.

Maybe just one percent of the budget and resource currently dedicated to the war against terrorism might be better spent in a war against porno spammers?

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