How many clever or not-too-clever phrases have been written about people's feelings concerning spam, that is, unwanted commercial e-mail? We'd like to can it, kill it, squash it, fry it and shred it. Yet it still keeps popping up in the . . .
How many clever or not-too-clever phrases have been written about people's feelings concerning spam, that is, unwanted commercial e-mail? We'd like to can it, kill it, squash it, fry it and shred it. Yet it still keeps popping up in the in-box, mocking us to do something about it. Enraging as it is, spam has become one of the pitfalls of using the Internet. Do your best to avoid it, but it will probably find you one way or another. In that case, you can tolerate a certain amount of it and accept it as one of the prices we pay to use e-mail.

But who wants to do that? Most of us just wish it would go away. But that's unlikely. As much as 45% of all e-mail sent this year will be spam and, by 2007, some forecasts suggest that spam may account for 70% of all e-mail. Given statistical trends like that, simply using e-mail is essentially an unintentional invitation to get spam, like having a telephone is an unintended invitation to get calls from telemarketers. And given that comparison, living a life that includes using e-mail yet is spam-free seems unlikely--unless you are very lucky.

But when it comes to spam, we've tended to have a serious lack of luck. Monday mornings--spammers always seem more active during the weekends--have for the last several months become the time for a ritualistic purging of the spam from our in-boxes. And so when the information-technology staff let us know that they were testing a new anti-spam tool, and that a few test subjects were needed, there was no shortage of volunteers.

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