Spam: An Escalating Attack of the Clones. Even in the face of human intervention, filtering software, legislation and litigation, there seems to be no stopping spam: unsolicited commercial e-mail traffic has tripled since last fall. There are, however, a few options for the beleaguered

From Filters to Forwarding: Ways to Fight Junk E-Mail. Internet service providers and filtering companies like Brightmail are on the front lines of fighting spam. But there are many things that consumers can do on their own. By Jennifer 8. Lee.. By Jennifer 8. Lee.

Two useful overview of the current state of the world with spam in the New York Times(registration required). Buried at the end of the second article is the fundamental reason that progress on this problem has been and is likely to remain slow:

If you want to contact Congressional representatives about anti-spam legislation, letters are still more effective than e-mail.

As long as our legislators are effectively insulated from experiencing the problem, they are unlikely to come up with any useful response.

While most of us have to deal with these challenges by ourselves, our elected representatives remain part of that shrinking group that has the luxury of human staffs to insulate them from spam and other painful aspects of life in the real world. It's little wonder that those who guide policy can seem so clueless. How can you get a clue if you isolate yourself from the experience?

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