What is spam?
Spam has been around since the beginning of the 'Net. According to Wikipedia, there is now 55 billion pieces of spam a day.
It used to be that you could stop most spam by being just a little careful. Now, it's not completely clear that you have any real control over it. Even with good junk mail filtering at the server and mail reader levels, I still get 300-500 spammails per day. One email address that I use has existed for almost 15 years though, so presumably it's gotten on a lot of lists.
Spamming is performed by acquiring a large list of email addresses somewhere, attaching a payload (ie; the message) and shotgunning it to millions of names on the lists. In the process, the spammers often use tricks to obfuscate the IP address to avoid retribution.
What's to be done about it? Eventually we will all have mail systems that will not allow mail in unless it's endorsed by someone that we know. That's the only way to be sure. Sure that the mail has a legitimate purpose even if it's still unwanted.
Email has to be completely opt-in. Given this kind of definition, it's easy to see that no matter what the Direct Marketing Association says, most commerical email outreach is spam and should be treated as such.
Posted on August 24, 2006