Chinese authorities say they have shut down more than 8600 unlicensed internet cafes in the last three months in their latest campaign to bring the communication channel under tighter political control.

On Monday the battle raging in cyberspace between spammers and their nemesis, junk mail activists, will be fought out in a courtroom, where a landmark judgement is expected to influence the future of direct marketing over the Internet.

You can get paid to receive ads on your mobile, but it might burst the spam dam, writes Nicole Manktelow.

If you already get too much junk e-mail, you'll get twice as much by New Year - and at the moment there is little anyone can do to stop it. No wonder consumers rate it their worst computer problem.

Spam, spam, spam, spam! In Monty Python's day, it was comical, but today the unavoidable excess of spam has gone way beyond a joke.

The e-mail system is wilting under the attack of confidence tricksters and the mad inventors of viruses, warns Garry Barker.