Spam lo

ISPs have been deluged with complaints. Furthermore, some ISPs report that spam places a considerable burden on their systems. A variety of technical countermeasures to spam have been proposed: the simplest are already being implemented; some of the more extreme could require dramatic changes to the ways we communicate electronically. In addition, there has been growing support in the U.S. for laws that would restrict the sending of spam. Prior to the commercialization of the Internet in the mid-1990s, the spam problem was quite limited. Unsolicited mail consisted mostly of messages from pranksters, chain letters, and inappropriate messages sent to established email lists by individuals who were either unaware their message would go to the entire list or unaware their messages were inappropriate for that forum. However, unsolicited commercial email messages were quite rare. Nonetheless, unwanted email messages were recognized as a problem in an Internet Request For Comments as early as 1975 [8] and in the pages of Communications as early as 1982 [2]. L o r r i e F a i t h C r a n o r a n d B r i a n A . L a M a c c h i a Spam!