Under the guidelines, marketers have to label their messages as advertisements and provide a valid opt-out mechanism for email users who do not want to receive their messages, the Attorney-General's department said.

They also have to send their messages from a genuine e-mail address and are forbidden to use misleading or false subject headers.

"This is a joint effort between the public and private sectors to curb e-mail spam," deputy chief executive and director-general of the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, Leong Keng Thai, said.

"The three Internet service providers receive thousands of complaints each month about spam."

But as long as the marketing messages abide by the new rules, businesses can still send out unsolicited commercial messages in bulk.

"We need to strike a balance between consumer and business interests. Singapore is a business centre, and an information and communication technology hub," Leong said.

"On the one hand, we need to address the issue of consumer perspective, but we do not want to overly burden or hamper legitimate businesses."

However, the impact of the planned legislation could be limited as the laws will only apply to messages sent from within Singapore. Nearly 80 percent of spam messages in the city-state comes from overseas.

"We are beginning to see international efforts against spam," Leong said, pointing out new anti-spam laws recently implemented in the United States, Australia, Japan, United Kingdom and South Korea.

"But it's still too early to have a global effort."

Singapore's proposed laws have been posted on an anti-spam website and are expected to be enacted by early next year after gathering public feedback, Leong said.

Experts have warned the volume of spam messages threatened to undermine the use of the Internet itself.

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