Regulations forcing internet companies to keep details of every e-mail sent in the UK are an attack on privacy and a waste of money, an expert warned yesterday.

Regulations forcing internet companies to keep details of every e-mail sent in the UK are an attack on privacy and a waste of money, an expert warned yesterday.

All internet service providers (ISP) will have to keep data about e-mails sent and received in the UK for a year when the rules come into effect in March. The timing and number of each communication must be retained, although the actual content of e-mails will not be.

The law is part of an EC directive that the government is understood to have to pay ISPs more than £25m a year to meet.

Dr Richard Clayton, a computing security researcher at Cambridge University, said: "There's going to be a record of every single e-mail which arrived addressed to you and all the e-mails you sent out via your ISP.

"There are much better things to spend our billions on than snooping on everybody in the country just on the off-chance that they're a criminal."

However, the Home Office said the data would be useful for combating crime.

A spokesman said: "Communications data is crucial for the police to be able to investigate and identify criminal suspects by examining their contacts, establish relationships between conspirators and place them in a specific location at a certain time.

"Implementing the EC directive will enable UK law enforcement agencies to benefit fully from historical communications data in increasingly complex criminal and terrorist investigations and will enhance our national security."