Virginia authorities said yesterday that they had arrested and charged a North Carolina man for sending spam in the first use of a new state law that could bring penalties of up to 20 years in prison.

Kevin Wilson is on a mission to rid his e-mail of unwanted electronic advertisements.

Congress has given the final approval on the "Can-Spam" bill, which will take affect Jan. 1, 2004. This federal legislation will override all state anti-spam laws, including tougher measures in states like California.

Against both spam and viruses, the best defense is still a well-protected network or PC. It seems that spammers have used the holiday season to increase their e-mail intrusions on our inboxes by 1,000 percent since Thanksgiving.

A group of e-mail marketers on Tuesday set up an Internet forum for people to air grievances about spam filters--which can swallow legitimate messages along with the targeted commercial come-ons.

Antispam company Habeas is suing bulk e-mailers, accusing them of using its poetry without permission in an unusual use of trademark law to clamp down on spammers.

Hundreds of computer programmers gathered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently, to figure out ways to solve the rising flood of unsolicited e-mail, also known as spam.

Think of Kevin Wilson as the self-appointed trash cop of the Internet superhighway. In short, he wants to clean up the spam - or unsolicited e-mail - littering the virtual world and clogging e-mail accounts.

A new e-mail virus capable of turning infected PCs into "spamming machines" emerged today, targeting corporate and home users in Europe and the U.S., a computer security expert said.

Developers of popular new Web logs think junk mail could thwart the electronic revolution.

California snared its first spammer Friday, winning a $2 million judgment against a Los Angeles County marketer that specialized in hawking how-to-spam books over the Internet.

Internet shopping malls were the biggest culprits in sending unwanted commercial mail or infringing on privacy last year, according to data released yesterday by the Ministry of Information and Communication. 2003.01.10

Microsoft and New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer on Thursday sued a group of e-mail marketers they said were responsible for sending billions of fraudulent spam messages.