The information commissioners are responsible for promoting public access to official information and protecting your personal information. If someone is exploiting personal information about you in order to send you unwanted e-mail they may be breaching data protection laws. In the UK the authority responsible for overseeing data protection laws is the Information Commissioner. If you feel you are in danger as a result of threatening or offensive e-mails, contact your local police station. If you want to make an official complaint regarding an issue of Data protection you can download a complaint form from the Office of The Information Commissioner here.

The Advertising Standards Authority works to keep advertising legal, decent, honest and truthful and judges advertisements, direct marketing and sales promotions against a set of Codes. The ASA's rulings are made independently of both government and the advertising industry. The ASA works predominantly with traditional and offline media, however, you can also complain to them if you:

• Think there is something wrong with an advertisement you have seen or heard

• Have difficultly getting goods or a refund for items bought by mail order or through television shopping channels

• Want to stop direct mail from companies sent either by post, fax, text message or e-mail.

The types of online advertisements the ASA deal with are:

• Advertisements on the Internet, include banner ads and pop-up ads (not claims on companies’ own websites)

• Commercial e-mail and SMS text message ads

• Ads on CD ROMs, DVD and video, and faxes

You can make a complaint via the ASA's website.