Stopping the Spammers

With nearly one in two e-mails being junk, consumers could stop doing business electronically. Danny Bradbury finds out how spammers work and what IT departments can do to fight them.

Asimple invitation enticing people to a reception for a new DEC-20 machine from an engineer in 1978 got the spam ball rolling. Now, it is threatening to seriously hinder e-mail as a medium for commercial communications. E-mail filtering company Brightmail has reported that 46% of all mails that it encounters are spam. If nearly one in two e-mails received are junk, consumers could easily revert to other means of communication. Clearly, something has to be done...full story here