MPs call for anti-spam rethink

System was intended for protect MPs from spam

The UK Government needs to rethink the e-mail spam system which is currently causing problems in Westminster, say MPs.

The system was intended to free MPs inboxes from the menace of spam and pornography but it has also been blocking legitimate debate about the Sexual Offences bill.

The Liberal Democrats have called for the government to have a major rethink of the current filtering system.

"It is a total disaster and needs to be pulled," said a Lib Dem spokesman.

Complex matter

Others have questioned whether the problems caused by the system is just another technology failure for the government, or whether it actually highlights the inability of filtering engines to work effectively.

It is actually blocking only one in every 160 received

House of Commons spokeswoman

Probably a bit of both, said public sector consultancy firm Hedra.

"The ideal of improper e-mails filtered out and all legitimate e-mails passing through is nearly impossible to deliver," said a spokesman.

"It is less a case of a government system failure as an illustration of the complexity of what they are facing," he added.

According to a House of Commons spokesperson the failures of the system have been over-hyped.

"It is actually blocking only one in every 160 received," she said.

In the first three weeks of the system being set up 555,000 e-mails were sent to MPs, of which 3,465 were blocked she said.

"But we only received 29 requests for unblocking," said the spokeswoman.

Ask the users

My advice to the government would have been to work with the users when devising the system as they are the ones that are on the receiving end

Matt Sergeant, MessageLabs

According to the Liberal Democrats this might not represent a true picture of unnecessary blocks because not everyone would have known that a legitimate e-mail never arrived.

The system relies on the sender of the e-mail contacting the MP in question to inform them that their mail has bounced back.

The system has now been adjusted to let all e-mails containing the phrase Sexual Offences Bill through and is "continually adjusted in response to users", said the spokeswoman for the House of Commons.

That should have happened much earlier on in the process said Matt Sergeant, senior spam analyst at filtering firm MessageLabs.

"My advice to the government would have been to work with the users when devising the system as they are the ones that are on the receiving end," he said.

He thinks one of the main faults of the system is that it uses a keyword search to look for words such as sex.

"You should never block based on just one thing," he said.

"Our system has a good success rate because we look for things that are invisible to the user such as the formatting of the e-mail and things in the header," he added.