Net regulators from around the globe ended last week's anti-spam conference sponsored by the International Telecommunication Union with a pledge to try and turn the torrential flood of unsolicited commercial e-mail into a trickle - if not dam it altogether.

At the first-ever global meeting of government representatives to address spam, which ended Friday in Geneva, regulators from around 60 countries agreed on the need to introduce legislation and embrace technology designed to curb unwanted e-mail, phishing and other forms of electronic fraud, which threaten to undermine the networked economy.

"We have a resolve to move forward on a global basis to attack spam and abuse of the Internet," said Robert Horton, acting chair of the Australian Communications Authority and chairman of the meeting hosted by the ITU, a unit of the United Nations. "This is an important start to solving a problem that is costing businesses and consumers over $25 billion a year and could easily reach into the trillions if it destroys the Internet methods of the banking industry."

Around 80% of all e-mail today is estimated to be spam, according to the ITU.

A key first step, Horton said in a telephone interview, is to have all countries introduce some form of anti-spam legislation and appoint a regulator. "If we can achieve this around the world, then we will have the foundation for a future global Memorandum of Understanding," he said.

Currently, only around 35 countries, primarily English-speaking developed nations, have introduced anti-spam laws, according to Horton.

However, almost all countries, including Africa, have shown interest in stemming the tide of spam and the use of e-mail to install spyware, spread viruses and steal sensitive information through phishing scams, which use unsolicited commercial e-mail to direct Internet users to Web sites controlled by thieves but designed to look like legitimate e-commerce sites, according to the chairman. "Even the poorest countries in the world see the Internet as their passport into a better life, in terms of the social, economic and educational opportunities that the Internet brings," he said. "Spam is weighing down on these countries because they don't have the economic investment available to control this problem to the same extent as developed countries."

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.