The Internet has allowed obnoxious people new ways to annoy the rest of us. The San Jose, Calif., market research firm surveyed more than 1,000 netizens about their feelings on these unsolicited email advertisements. And respondents were not happy. The majority, two-thirds of all respondents, favor regulation of email to prevent the mass mailing of commercial email, spamming, as it's known colloquially.
Junk mail is more than just annoying.
If we remember last year's trouble that Philadelphia-based CyberPromotions, the best known spammer, caused America Online. The excess spam email crippled AOL's servers and caused almost two days of outages. The AOL incident landed CyberPromotions in court, but that was only one of the related court cases the Philadelphia spammer is facing. It has consistently used free speech arguments to defend its actions. Meanwhile, Cyber Promotions has released a software package called Cyber Bomber.