At last, we have arrived. As you can see, spam is a huge and apparently growing problem on the internet. Due to the nature of the internet, though, it is not a problem that is easily controlled. As I outlined, spammers are spread out all over the world. Many of them reside in countries which have no laws regarding spam. Additionally, the email system, as designed, is very insecure. There is no fool-proof way to track a message to it’s sender and it is all too easy to manipulate the headers of an email to make it look like it came from anyone. It would be like all of us, anywhere, being able to type in our own name and phone number before making a call to someone and that information showing up on the Caller ID system. We would never be able to trust the information on caller ID. Instead, though, we have a centralized system controlled by the phone company which provides that control. On the internet, there is no such thing.