I think most computer users share with me this feeling about e-mail-that it is both a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing when you use it to send and receive critical correspondence on a project deadline to people in different time zones, without staying up late or getting up early to make a call or send a fax.

But it's a curse when it takes you most of the morning to delete the 25 to 100 unsolicited e-mails that land in your inbox every day.

You've all seen these offers arrive daily: "Regrow hair fast in 10 days," "Get out of debt forever" or the infamous "Special business opportunity," supposedly offered by an obscure royal from a faraway land.

These are mild compared with e-mails that can damage your computer. The worst offenders are warnings of "deadly" computer viruses that infect your machine when the e-mail is opened and take a talented IT support staff to remove.

Not only is spam annoying, but it also costs computer users and corporations time and money. Spam clogs up e-mail systems, adding storage requirements at Internet service provider and user sites. In addition, spam increases network traffic and decreases total available bandwidth, so that additional network resources are required. And it also requires computer resources, which must be expended to filter and delete unwanted e-mail.

Computer users and corporations are fighting back with spam filters. But sometimes those solutions create other problems and cost money because they can filter out the wrong stuff.

A system used by a corporation I know filters out e-mail when certain words are found in attachments. Most people don't object-until the first time they realize they can't receive e-mails with work-related attachments that they want, need and expect to access.

With e-mail spamming having approached colossal proportions, there are efforts afoot in Congress to pass legislation that would restrict the use of unsolicited commercial e-mail-in other words, spam-and to exact penalties on those who generate and send such mail.

Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) has introduced the CAN-Spam act of 2003 ( S.877), which would impose criminal penalties for the improper transmission of unsolicited commercial electronic mail via the Internet.

And in the House, Rep. Rush Hold (D-N.J.) has reintroduced the Wireless Telephone Spam Protection Act (H.R. 122), which would prohibit the text, graphic or image message systems of wireless telephone systems from being used for the purpose of transmitting unsolicited commercial messages.

IEEE weighs in

IEEE-USA , meanwhile, has asked its members to contact their U.S. representatives and senators and let them know where they stand on spam. EE Times readers are encouraged to do the same.

The organization supports legislation designed to reduce unsolicited commercial e-mail on the Internet and advocates using "opt-in" as a means of controlling unwanted spam.

For additional information on IEEE-USA's stand on spam legislation and other legislative updates, go to www.capwiz.com/ieeeusa/issues/alert.

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