The BBC undercover reporting team managed to confront two men who were responsible for sending out 60 million text messages a month over PPI and road traffic accident claims.

Andrew Horner-Glister and Barry Sanders  boasted about being the biggest creators of nuisance text messages in the UK but say they stopped in 2012 and the companies they ran have been wound up.

That makes it difficult for the authorities to do anything about the pair even though their actions were illegal.

While being secretly filmed, Mr Horner-Glister said: ‘We send 200,000 texts out, get 300 positive responses back, we did that for years. We were probably the largest in the UK.’

So their response rate was just 0.15% and 199,700 people out of the 200,000 had their time wasted with nuisance messages they didn’t want.

Unfortunately it can be so easy and cheap to send out texts and emails that people can do so, without having to think of how much annoyance and time-wasting they cause.

Now you understand why you sometimes get the same annoying message time and time again – the senders don’t care and can’t be bothered to stop sending to people who don’t want the messages.

It’s a shame they cannot be jailed for their activity or at least have their ill-gotten gains confiscated.

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