Leader: Should we live in gated email communities?

eBay today announced plans to move its users within a 'gated community' for email - to protect all their correspondence from the lurking nasties of phishing, scams and spam that await in the real world.

It's an understandable move and a responsible one in the large part by a company which has clearly grown tired of its users and its brand being abused by phishing scams.

But it paves the way for more of the same - the end product of which may be a total deconstruction of the very notion of email and how it should work. The irony of the gated 'community' is that there are few words less appropriate to describe the dissolution of freedom to roam and interact.

The idea of the gated community is not uncommon. It's often the move that many take in a society when they have enough money to ensure their own personal safety and disavow the problems affecting others. It perpetuates the rich-poor divide and creates a starkly polarised society.

Issues such as phishing and spam have pushed many to consider such measures with regards to their email. Like city workers buying into gated communities in the East End, their strategy will do little for the community outside or the problems it faces... but that's not their concern. Their presence makes life tougher for those outside, as will be the case with email. Those outside the gated communities will be attacked by the scammers in increasingly brutal and sophisticated ways as the scammers target their diminishing audience.

There is no real criticism here of those who decide to cut themselves off - any chance to escape the deluge of unwanted emails is surely tempting and many have grown tired of the idea that such ills will one day be cured.

The problems don't stop with the perpetuation of problems such as phishing or spam though - and life within the gated community will not all be rosy.

A tool to streamline and consolidate communication into an ordered, foldered desktop environment will no longer be a relevant way to consider email. More log-ins, more 'email' accounts, more opportunities for accounts to go unread for a while, messages to go unanswered and important information to get 'lost in the post'.

Without the likes of Visa we would soon tire of needing a different credit card for each and every shop we visit, or different currencies for every pub we drink in. After a while it would either make us limit our behaviour and become insular and unidirectional or it would drive us insane with the unnecessary complexity of it all.

The same is probably true of email. If you think one account is bad - try having 10, 20 or 30. It simply won't be practical.