Fighting spam to provide an e-message for the masses

A recent study of marketing professionals found that 92% of them include email in their marketing mi...

A recent study of marketing professionals found that 92% of them include email in their marketing mix and 51% intend to increase their budget for this medium next year. At the same time, consumers showed their appetite for emails, rating it just 7% behind television as the most effective marketing channel. But momentum in the sector has attracted the less scrupulous masses; throughout 2004 spam retained its parasitic grip on email. Recent figures suggest that spam accounts for 69% to 87% of all emails. The EU Privacy and Electronics Communication Directive introduced in 2003 stated: "I...