The Internet is sagging under the weight of an estimated 13 billion pieces of junk e-mail a year. A single e-mail account can send a message to millions of consumers at virtually no cost. Unlike other forms of advertising, spam shifts costs from the sender to the recipient. Consumers who pay for Internet service by the hour pay to download junk e-mail. Those who pay a flat fee can have their connections deluged by a torrent of spam.
Employees lose time sifting through spam, occasionally deleting critical business e-mails.
And ISPs have to buy additional equipment to handle this flood. Several ISPs have been temporarily shut down when mass mailers used them as a return path for their junk e-mail. Several states have begun to pass legislation to restrict spam. Perhaps the most aggressive is Virginia. It also makes it illegal to possess, with intent to distribute, software that facilitates this process.