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According to recent statistics, 60% of all email is spam and another 25% are viruses. That's 85% of this essential communication tool clogged up with wasteful and harmful messages.

Many people have only recently become introduced to spam, but in reality, it has been around since the mid 90s before many of us even started using email. There are conflicting stories on who actually started spam, and most of the conflict lies in the definition of the word. Therein lies a major problem in reducing or eliminating spam. Someone's marketing material is someone else's spam.

The closest metaphor to the spam problem lies in your mailbox at home and the junk mail we have been receiving all our lives. Is the catalog that will almost certainly be in your mailbox when you get home junk mail? It depends. If it's from someone you want to do business with, it's a useful catalog if not it's junk mail.

People have complained about junk mail as long as there has been a postal service, but what could you do about it? Ban junk mail and you won't get that catalog you want for Christmas shopping or the pizza coupon you are going to use this weekend. The same issues exist for spam you first have to define it.

Many companies do legitimate mass mailings of email. You may receive an email from vendors with which you do business. You quickly glance at them, decide if there is anything useful and either file or delete them. But what would happen if you suddenly decided you didn't want one of them any more? They would immediately become spam! The email hasn't changed, only your attitude toward it.

That's fine, you say, but nobody wants to buy the Viagra, or get the new home mortgage, or the stock tips that clog our inboxes. Well, that's just not true. If they weren't making money for someone, they wouldn't exist. Someone is buying this stuff, if even just a few people. And that's where the metaphor with junk mail breaks down.

It costs real money to send junk mail through the postal service. There has to be a decent return on the investment to make the effort worthwhile. But millions of emails can be sent for pennies, so the risk is so low that any return is worth the investment.

What about the Can-Spam act? It's a great effort and a reasonable direction to take. The problem is that it only affects people in this country. The majority of spam comes form the Far East, India, Europe, and Canada. And it still doesn't do enough to define spam or have tough enough teeth behind it.

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