I am at a loss to figure out how to rid my e-mail of those bottom-feeders of the electronic world, the generators of spam.  I am equally confounded by why they persist and proliferate.  Apparently, the combined forces of the software and computer industries and of Internet service providers are fighting a losing battle. 

When it is not promoting smut, spam is attempting to sell something – cheap software, discounted pharmaceuticals, penis and breast enhancements, and so on.  Everyone I know claims to be able to recognize spam instantly from the subject line and deletes it immediately.  Indeed, little intelligence is required to distinguish between spam and legitimate mail since many spammers, in an effort to bypass filters, are resorting to strings of nonsense or intentional misspellings in the subject lines. 

I realize that spam is generated by electronic programs that can spew out gazillions of messages with lightning speed.  This is why there is so much of it.  I also realize that, with today’s technology, anyone with a scam to perpetrate can sit on his fat, lazy butt and promote that scam in millions of in-boxes without spending much money.  Obviously, they are convinced that, if they dangle enough worms in the water, there will be a sufficient number of fish who are stupid enough to take the bait that it’s worth the little effort it takes.  And, just as obviously, they must be right, or they would have given up long ago.  Instead, the proportion of e-mail that is spam is becoming larger. 

My spam-killer of choice is SpamNet, which not only blocks spam efficiently but adds to its database any spam that I report when it fails to catch it.  I could tell it to delete all spam entirely, but, since even the best of programs will occasionally mistake legitimate mail for spam, I have SpamNet send it to my deleted items folder, where I can check for legitimate mail before dumping the spam en masse back into the cesspool from which it came. 

SpamNet keeps a running tally of how much e-mail I receive, how many messages it identifies as spam, and how many I report as spam when it does not block them.  In the first 29 days of July 2004, for example, its tally shows that I received 531 e-mail messages, 262 of which were spam (it blocked 240; I identified 22 others).  In other words, for almost a month, close to half of my incoming mail has been spam.  Only two legitimate messages were mistakenly labeled as junk, and the 22 messages that I blocked manually were so clearly spam that I did not even open them. 

The rising tide of spam was, of course, what compelled me to install SpamNet in the first place.  Although both my ISP and my McAfee Internet Security program offer spam killers, I chose SpamNet because of its high ratings by PC World magazine and because it enables me to report spam. 

Nevertheless, filters and blocks are only band-aids.  The stuff still clogs the Internet arteries and costs legitimate businesses literally millions of dollars as they and their employees try to rid themselves of it.  Anti-spam legislation is popular but has no teeth; the FCC has its hands full dealing with outright fraud without having to deal with annoyances as well, however ubiquitous these annoyances may be. 

And make no mistake about it – spam is a major annoyance.  It ranks right up there with telemarketing before national don’t-call legislation drove many of these scumbags out of business. 

What’s most irritating, to me at least, is not the intrusive messages themselves (I can, after all, delete them easily and in batches).  Rather, it is that I cannot fathom the demented minds that launch the stuff.  Quotes in the press from professional spammers who defend the practice strike me as ludicrous.  Even more irritating is my awareness that somebody must be responding to these messages.  Even if it is only one percent or a half a percent, that’s a lot of incredibly stupid people. 

If I were Emperor of the World, I would lock all the spammers in a room and force them to watch nothing but TV commercials for the rest of their miserable lives, and I would condemn the people who respond to spammers to do nothing but clean the toilets in this room.