Spam sucks! That unsolicited junk e-mail that clogs our in-boxes, saps a tonne of Internet bandwidth, keeps the spam filters busy, and basically annoys everyone, it really sucks. And it's only going to get worse.

Researchers from IDC have speculated that 2007 will be a banner year for spam, with spam e-mail set to out number person-to-person e-mail messages. You know, the e-mail that you actually want to read as opposed to the junk you want to delete. Though in its early day e-mail did herald a great new method of simple digital communications, many people (probably fed up with spam) have recently switched to Instant Messaging clients and VoIP phone calls as a better method of instant communications.

Many businesses and cooperate environments have also switched to internal chat clients, simply because employees are beginning to question wither or not their really important e-mail with attached document will be revived by the recipient in question, and not flagged as spam by their e-mail filter. And need I mention the profane amount of viruses and Trojans that accompany oh so many e-mail attachments. Or what about the foolish folk who open those attachments to see the naked pictures of some Pop Star Hollywood actress. That or the really good deal on some male erectile dysfunction medication made by some guy in another country using aspirin, gasoline and a bath tub.  

IDC projects that the total number of spam messages will increase to some 40 billion in 2007, with legit person-to-person e-mails starting to trail behind. But if we were to count automated business and charitable e-mails, we could set that total number of spam mails to 97 billion. And yes, I do count that e-mail from my ISP telling me about important security updates for Windows as spam.

"Spam volumes are growing faster than expected due to the success of image-based spam in bypassing anti-spam filters and of email sender identity spoofing in getting higher response rates," said Mark Levitt, the VP in charge of IDC's Collaborative Computing and Enterprise Workplace research. "Instant messaging, joined by free and low-cost VoIP calling, will result in slower e-mail growth, especially among teens and young adults."

IDC believes that companies souls start to consider e-mail as one small portion of their greater communications network infrastructure. Large businesses (and individuals) should start to consider IM as a viable (and far more secure) internal communications method. And even though spam may be on the rise, modern filtering technologies help to weed out that digital junk mail.

That gives me a great idea! Let's start tracking down spammers, finding  out where they live, and signing them up for countless numbers of unsolicited junk mail to be delivered right to their door by a very irate postal worker who has to lug 80 pounds worth of flyer's and coupons in a bursting sack and try to stuff it all into the spammers mail slot. Wait, that would probably constitute postal fraud, but it sure would be nice.