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Still no? Well, neither do I, nor do the millions of others who fire up their emaileach day to find it littered with countless offers to buy questionable shares ortreatments for erectile disfuncion.
Nevertheless, it doesnÂ't stop the spammers from sending us this meaningless garbage.
With our increasing dependence upon email, messaging and the internet in recentyears spam has grown exponentially, and has replaced malware (viruses and worms) andhacker damage as the number one cause of business loss.
A US survey conducted in October 2006 found that spam, when measured in terms ofdenial of service and productivity losses, accounted for a staggering $10.4 billion.By comparison, the damage from malware was $8.5 billion, and hacker damage fromverifiable overt digital attacks caused less than $1 billionof losses.
So while it's important to protect yourself against malware and the attentions ofhackers, increasingly it's the sheer amount of time spent dealing with common spamthat's costing us all money.
Of course, spam isn't just about unsolicited junk mail. It can carry viruses,spyware and phishing attacks, or employed to overload email servers and cause adenial of service (DoS) attack. Sadly, there's still plenty of people out therewho'll open an unrecognised email attachment from the FBI, or what they think istheir bank  with devastating consequences.
SMEs are the most vulnerable businesses to spam, since big enterprises tend to havededicated filters in place to check both outbound and inbound emails. SMEs tend torely upon proprietary software and hope the problem of spam will remain manageable.
Another solution is to filter emails off-site, but this can cause concerns aboutconfidentiality and security. The only sure way to overcome the proliferation ofspam is to pay for a system where a team of technicians around the world willanalyse data and statistics from all clients using the system, to help build apattern of traffic and employ counter measures.
Spammers never sleep, so spam fighters, utilising different time zones and massivecollective processing power must operate 24/7.
So long as spammers make money  and the Direct Marketing Association say emailgenerates $32 billion in sales peryear  there'll be only one loser in the never-ending battle between emailadministrators and spammers: the honest business.
Just as anti-crime laws don't prevent crime effectively, so anti-spam laws will notprevent spam. Only by staying one step ahead of the spammer, by constantly analysingdata worldwide and applying remedies, will businesses be able to operate free fromquestionable financial offers and much worse.
