The reasons these intrusive forms of advertising continue are straightforward: the cost of initiating the communication, to the spammer, is negligible. Although the combined aggravation to the individuals suffering the communications is considerable, these individuals do not have any commercial bargaining position-because they remain individual (not large corporate) accounts for their service providers and they cannot move to a spam free service because spam is a universal problem.

Faced with this, it's tempting to assume that nothing can be done to alleviate the problem. There are some work-arounds though.

Junk faxes

In July 2005, Hong Kong's Office of the Telecommunications Authority (OFTA) revised a code of practice setting out the procedure for local fixed telecommunications network service (FTNS) operators to follow in handling complaints against senders of unsolicited fax advertisements. Under that code, customers of the FTNS operators can inform their operator that their fax number(s) (but not their names) should be added to a 'not-to-call' list.

The operators should regularly send the updated list to OFTA. Customers can verify that their fax numbers have been added to the not-to-call list by downloading a consolidated list from OFTA's website (http://www.ofta.gov.hk/en/junkfax/ntc-list.html).