Text: Marie Le Breton

Spiced Pork And Meat are the words that hide behind the acronym SPAM. In one of their most famous sketches, Monty Python turned it into an endless song that culminates in a choral crescendo, “Spam, spam, spam....” The comedians thus became the source of the nickname for unwanted e-mail that fills people’s in-boxes, a problem which – increasingly – is no laughing matter: spam accounts for between 30% and 50% of all e-mail. Spamming is usually done for commercial purposes and is a degenerate form of e-mail marketing, because it uses pirated address lists. While it offers small businesses an inexpensive way to advertise, spam gives net surfers indigestion! According to a report by the European Commission, spam clogs networks and generates ten billion euros a year of indirect costs in the form of connection charges... borne by recipients! In the corporate world, spam also constitutes a drain on employee productivity, and anti-spam filters sometimes obstruct the transmission of legitimate messages. Addresses that appear on web sites are a prime target for spammers, who use special software to gather e-mail addresses from web pages. One way to protect your address is to disguise it by replacing the “@” symbol with the word “at” and the “.” with the word “dot” spelled out. If, despite your efforts, you find yourself with a bad case of spamitis, never reply to spam (which would confirm the validity of your address) and never open attachments. Because in addition to taking up space, spam mail can be virus-infected....