No matter how much money I spend on products and services to stop spam, junk e-mailers still control my in-box. The spam volume isn't subsiding despite new laws and antispam technology, say studies (and says me). The only ones who benefit from ineffective laws are the companies that offer antispam products.

The spam onslaught throws open a window of opportunity to entrepreneurs cashing in on the antispam industry. Market researchers at The Radicati Group estimate that about 300 companies offer antispam products.

Spam is a drain on U.S. corporate budgets to the tune of $10 billion dollars this year, according to Ferris Research. The figure includes lost productivity plus the cost of spam-fighting hardware and software, and the IT staff needed for combat.

Personally, spam will cost me at least $100 this year. First, I pay $4 monthly for a subscription to a spam-filter program. (It helps, but I still end up deleting spam from my in-box and rescuing desirable messages from my junk e-mail folder.) Then I shell out the $50 annual fee for an antivirus service to kill viruses that wiggle into my in-box. What's more, my ISP is increasing its rates by 8 percent--and I'm guessing that's partly in response to the rising cost of fighting spam.

And here's the newest cost on the horizon: the cost of sending e-mail.

Paying the Out-Box Piper

One of the biggest complaints I hear is that legitimate e-mail gets blocked by overzealous spam filters. When this happens, you can only hope the recipients check their junk e-mail folder for your message. But that won't help if your e-mail is blocked by an ISP and never reaches the recipient's computer.

E-mail infrastructure company IronPort has proposed a Bonded Sender e-mail certification program, which creates a "safe list" of certified e-mail senders. The idea is that ISPs won't filter out this approved class of e-mail. Companies that want to send bonded e-mail must enroll, post a cash bond, and agree to pay a $20 fine for each complaint their e-mail generates.

So far, both Microsoft's MSN and Hotmail services are implementing the Bonded Sender program and promise not to block any IronPort bonded messages sent to their 170 million users. Also, IronPort has recruited 28,000 other companies, universities, and ISPs to be in the program and promise to let bonded e-mail pass through their spam filters unchecked. But only a pittance of firms--including major companies like Google, Hallmark Cards, and about 50 others--have posted bonds to assure that their e-mail won't be blocked by Bonded Sender participants.

While IronPort says the Bonded Sender program is not designed to make money, the cost is still prohibitively high for individuals. If you run a small business or a newsletter and worry that your e-mail is getting blocked, you can sign up for IronPort's Bonded Sender program through Constant Contact, a do-it-yourself e-mail marketing firm targeting small businesses.

Prices vary, but if you send fewer than 250 e-mail messages at a time, the costs will run you about $145 a year. If you generate complaints the cost goes up $20 per gripe.

On the flip side, you can pay to be reassured that your recipient got your e-mail, if you're afraid a filter blocked it. A service called DidTheyReadIt lets you know if your recipient opens the message. It runs $4 monthly (based on a year's subscription) and works with any e-mail client including Web-based services.

Privatizing E-Mail

This increase in the number and type of spam-filtering products and services is a disturbing trend toward what I call privatizing e-mail. If we can't rely on the public Internet pipes alone to reliably transport e-mail, we need to pay third parties for services to ensure the messages' safe delivery. E-mail is no longer simple and free.

Free Web mail services, like Hotmail and Yahoo, are still available, but are far too susceptible to spam. These free services are offering spam filters now, too--usually for a fee.

It's a sad reality that spam is hurting the public Internet and lessening the effectiveness of e-mail. The efficiency and convenience of e-mail is being more tightly tied to for-profit companies such as ISPs with spam filters, filtering subscription services for individuals, and bonded sender firms and companies that provide return receipts. You can bet e-mail is going to cost increasingly more to use.

Seventy percent of e-mail users say spam makes using the Internet annoying, according to a recent Pew Internet and American Life study. More disturbing is that 25 percent of e-mail users told Pew researchers that increasing spam volumes has reduced their overall use of e-mail.

High-Tech Saviors

The best way to fight spam is to change how e-mail works. Big Internet companies like America Online, Microsoft, and Yahoo are developing better authentication techniques to verify that e-mail isn't spam. But each system requires widespread adoption and is far from being implemented.

My hopes lie with the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet standards body that is working on ways to improve the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol code used for sending e-mail. In addition to improving SMTP so that ISPs can verify where messages originate, the IETF is trying to come up with credible alternatives to the patchwork of technologies and laws that are proving to be ineffective against spam.

But these antispam solutions are years away from becoming reality. In the meantime, I'll pay the spam tax for filters and keep looking for free, yet effective, spam solutions.

Q&A

Q. I think my ISP is trying to pull a fast one over on me. It recently offered a spam filter service for $10 a year. When I signed up in February I was receiving three to five spam e-mails a day. Now I get three times that number even after I paid money to stop the spam. Is my ISP doing something wrong? Should I drop this ISP?
--Bill P.

A.First off, I feel your pain. But your spam volume is increasing because spam is a growing problem overall. You may want to double-check with your ISP to make sure you're using your spam filter correctly. If that doesn't help, consider making your e-mail address harder for spammers to guess. The longer and more cryptic your e-mail address, the harder it is for spammers to target. Lastly, if you're still having problems with spam, try to get your money back; then check out alternative, personal spam filter programs like Audiotrieve's InBoxer, Cloudmark's SpamNet, or Sunbelt Software's IHateSpam, all recommended by PC World.

Send gripes, questions, and tips for the spam wars to Tom Spring. Go to the Spam Watch page for spam-fighting articles and downloads.