AS the General Election campaign gets underway, I have already been contacted by concerned Darlington voters who want to ask me about allegations they have seen on obscure websites.

As the electoral commission admitted just the other day, the internet is unregulated. Darlington voters are already (it seems) being bombarded with emails, directing them to all kinds of websites, with either fake news, or rehashed old news, presented quite wrongly as recent news.

A great deal of money is made from these websites. Owners are paid for each hit on these websites. The biggest scandal of all is, how have these shadowy website owners managed to get hold of so many email addresses?

Also how are they managing to tailor make these email messages individually targeting voters?

Cllr Nigel Boddy, Darlington