Mounting Volume of Junk Defies Filters, Delete Keys
Many Monty Python fans rank the Spam Skit, where a waitress recites a litany of breakfast options featuring spam, among their favorite sketches from the troupe's 1970s heyday. Somewhere along the way a cunning linguist in Silicon Valley transformed the brand name of the processed meat product into a common noun for unsolicited electronic mail.
Most who receive e-mail today are very much like the hapless wife in the Python skit: doomed to be served spam, stunning amounts of it, whether we want it or not. Opening the e-mail seems to take longer every day, culling legitimate business-related messages from a variety of get-rich schemes, snake oil pitches, offers of spiritual enlightenment, political spiels and sexual come-ons.