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When asked which activities they found to be unacceptable, only 62% thought snooping in someone else's inbox was off limits, whilst only 56% said it wasn't on to read text messages on someone else's phone without their permission.

Love rats should also be on their guard for Facebook honeytraps: only three out of ten thought it unacceptable to test a partner's loyalty using social networking sites, although only 5% of those surveyed admitted that they had done so.

It also appears Britain is a nation of nosey parkers. A prying 27% of people have looked at friends' Facebook/MySpace content that was intended for others (although if it's on their Facebook page, how private can it be?). And 17% of people admit to Googling friends to see what the search engine throws up about them.

New technology also appears to be sapping people's courage: only 52% of people thought it would be unacceptable to send "major" bad news by SMS or email, although only 6% were prepared to admit they've actually done so.