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Last May, it was reported that more than 80 percent of all e-mails in the United States were spam. That's a rather amazing number, as many as 30 billion messages.
What's even more amazing is that 80 percent of this crap comes from just 200 operations. Two hundred soulless hucksters are costing us $10 billion a year in wasted time and computing resources. We even know who they are: They're listed in Spamhaus' ROKSO database, the Register of Known Spam Operations.
If they're so few, and we know who they are, why don't we prosecute them? Spammers are like electronic silverfish; they use the Internet's ubiquity to evade the legal system. Most anti-spam suits are filed in state courts, but spammers can slip geographic boundaries. Congress passed the CAN SPAM act in 2003, but it was so toothless that some activists now call it the "You Can Spam" act. The feds could request stronger snooping powers, but that makes civil libertarians (rightly) nervous.
For now, we all have to live with it, and celebrate small victories. This month the world's eighth most prolific spammer, Jeremy Jaynes, starts a nine-year prison sentence in Virginia. He'll be the first person ever imprisoned for spamming.
