Unwanted e-mails about hair growth and Nigerian dignitaries wanting to hand over large sums of money are becoming so prevalent and invasive that the federal government is considering proposals to outlaw spam.
The amount of junk e-mail, or spam, increased by 200 per cent last year, according to the head of an antispam lobby, and it's bound to get worse.
"[Spam] can basically blow productivity out of the water," said Neil Schwartzman, chairman of the Canadian branch of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail.
"If it continues at this pace it will render e-mail useless, and I would not be surprised if people stop using e-mail," he said, adding that he knows people who receive up to 45,000 unwanted messages each month.
In an attempt to lighten the load on the country's in-boxes, Industry Canada revealed this week it is considering several moves to stop junk e-mail, even if that means laws banning the nuisance.
Solace from spam may be far away, however, as policymakers must decide whether it should be Internet service providers that patrol for junk mail or whether the onus for filtering it should lie with the public.
Most major ISPs use filtering devices to guard against spam, Mr. Schwartzman, said, but much of the junk manages to get through.
While most computer users agree that spam is offensive, not much can be done because the practice of sending junk e-mail does not break any laws.
However, a European study cited in Industry Canada's discussion paper estimates the cost of spam at $14-billion per year worldwide.
"Some [messages] are clearly fraudulent, for example promoting pyramid and bogus no-risk investment schemes," the report says. "Others, like those advertising 'miracle' diet and health products, are misleading and deceptive."
The paper estimates that about 31 billion messages worldwide were sent over the Internet in 2002, a number estimated to surpass 60 billion by 2006.
Spam represents about 30 per cent of all Internet traffic, not just e-mail, up from 10 per cent two years ago.
The paper notes that the situation has become much worse since 1999, when Industry Canada decided that existing laws would be enough to stem the flow of unwanted messages.
Might as well suspend the sentence...