Spam It!

* Two out of every five-mails sent are spam messages. In all, Internet users send 31 billion e-mails a day, 12.4 billion of which are spam. The average e-mail user receives six spam messages per day, or almost 2,200 per year.1

* Spam cost to all non-corporate Internet users: $225 million. Spam cost to all U.S. corporations: $8.9 billion.2

* Twenty-six states currently have anti-spam laws.3

* On Nov. 3, 2004, two North Carolina residents became the first in the nation to be convicted on felony spamming charges in Virginia. The jury recommended thatjeremy Jaynes spend nine years in prison and that his sister, Jessica DeGroot, pay $7,500 in fines for violating Virginia's anti-spam law.4

* In 1978, the first documented e-mail spam was sent as an invitation to thousands of accounts by the Digital Equipment Corp. (now part of Hewlett Packard) to members of ARPANet (military/academic predecessor to Internet) to attend a product demonstration.3

* Use of the term "spam" was adopted as a result of a Monty Python skit in which SPAM, the meat product, was featured. In the skit, a group of Vikings sang a chorus of "spam, spam, spam" in increasing crescendo, drowning out other conversation. Hence, the analogy that unsolicited commercial e-mails were drowning out normal discourse on the Internet.6

* The term "spam" caught on after March 31 , 1 993, when a bug caused 200 e-mails to be sent in a row to members of a newsgroup. Some of those on the receiving end were familiar with the Monty Python skit.7

* What does SPAM think about spam? "We do not object to use of this slang term to describe UCE (unsolicited commercial e-mail), although we do object to the use of the word 'spam' as a trademark and to the use of our product image in association with that term," according to Hormel Foods' Web site.8

Sources: 1,2,3. viww.spamfilteTreview.com; 4. www.washinglonpost.com; 5. www.templetons.com; 6. www.spam.com; 7. www.templetonx.com; 8. www.spam.com