ABSTRACT
E-mail is perhaps the Internet’s primal communication mechanism, being both one of its earliest and most commonly used forms. Yet almost since its inception, it has faced a tide of spam-unwanted e-mails from people seeking personal gain. While most of us see spam as a personal inbox problem, the real problem is a community one. Even if all users succeeded in £ltering all their spam to their trashcans, the Internet we share would still have to transmit, process, and store this electronic garbage. e spam your £lter “catches” has already wasted Internet resources, and indeed has already been downloaded, processed, and stored by you.
