You might have noticed more and more spam getting through your email filters these days. If you ever read one of these spams you might have seen that instead of text, these spams contain images that are attached to the email. Since OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is decent at best there's no method presently to automatically identify these messages based on their content. However what is highly ironic about it is that anti-spam software has used the same method to stop spam and prevent automated sign ups at websites and forums by so called spambots that post junk and advertising. The hunted is now using the weapon of the hunter...
While there might not be a good method to automatically read these images, or so called "captchas", spam can be fought in many ways. A method that has been highly successful is one based on users identifying and reporting spam. When a message arrives in your inbox your email application checks with a server to see if it's been marked by spam by other people, if enough many people have reported it as being spam it is immediately moved to your spambox. GMail uses this method and it is very effective. It doesn't require the computer to be able to analyze the contents of the message, it is based on human sorting so spam regardless of its content, text or images, ends up where it belongs.
I wish access to spam control tools were cheaper and easier to use so that more people would use them, as it would save money everywhere and would probably lead to a better workplace and higher life quality for most people. I also wish more ISPs implemented the Sender Protection Framework to prevent another aspect of spam, people using your name to sent bulk mail. It is extremely annoying getting tons of bounces in your inbox, and what's even worse is knowing spammers use your name, your domain name and email address to impersonate your or appear somehow affiliated with you.
Spam is still a problem, even in 2006 spam is a problem that remains to be fixed, and stopped. Spam is immoral as it eats resources of the society, it feeds on others and doesn't pay for itself. Unlike regular advertising which the advertiser pays for, spam is paid for by its involuntary recipients. Some sources estimate the total cost of spam worldwide to about $200,000,000,000 - enough money to provide education, food, clothing and shelter for the 83 million homeless children that live in India for the next ten years. Think about that for a while...