Spam, Goddam!

Remember, you only need to steal a penny from four million people in order to have enough money to buy yourself a brand new Mercedes-Benz! - CAUCE (Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail)

Did you ever wonder how a respectable meat product manufactured by Hormel acquired such an irritating double meaning as Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail, (better known as junk e-mail)? Well, wonder no more, but continue to be annoyed.

Like postal junk mail and that lovely telemarketer call in the middle of a meal or important discussion, spam is about as welcome as a nest of invading ants at a picnic. If P.T. Barnum weren't pushing up daisies for more than one hundred years now, I would have sworn that he was behind this modern, pesky phenomenon. According to a report prepared by Forester Research, online users in North America claim that more than one-third of their e-mail is junk mail, with the average consumer getting bombarded with one hundred and ten unwanted messages every week. Even Microsoft, the world's largest software company, has filed fifteen lawsuits in the United States and in The United Kingdom against spammers who have sent them mail touting everything from "get rich quick" schemes to pornographic web sites.