Few will have celebrated the recent 10th birthday of spam. The first unsolicited electronic message was sent out (ironically by a pair of lawyers) in Arizona during April 1994. Since then, everyone using e-mail has learnt to their frustration and cost how spam clogs the channels of electronic communication.
There are different views about the size of the problem, but it is generally agreed that we are well past the turning point: the majority of e-mail in unprotected inboxes is now unsolicited junk mail. The costs to business of reading, storing, deleting and filtering out spam are incalculable.
