[SpyGuy]

There is also an important social component to this problem that must not be overlooked. The ugly truth is that a good percentage of spam is pornographic in nature. I'm not just talking about messages that say, "If you're over 18, click here." I'm talking about text desciptions and images of some of the most graphic and perverse pornography you could ever imagine, including beastiality, child pornography (perhaps simulated but revolting nonetheless), S&M, scatology (sexual pleasure derived from feces and urine), homosexual acts, rape, etc. Actual IMAGES of this stuff delivered daily into your home for you and your family to see, courtesy of the spammers.

How many American children get this stuff in their email boxes (at home or at school) everyday? How would you like it if someone sent your child graphic photos like this via US Postal Mail (and made you pay for the delivery too)?

And--this is what really pisses me off--the spammers deliberately craft their messages to bypass the filters that are supposed to safeguard your children (let alone your own sensabilities) from this pornography. That is why they mis-spell words (like "seks" instead of "seks"), use graphics instead of text, and use false subject lines. If they were only interested in getting this stuff to the people who wnat it, they wouldn't deliberately design their messages to slip through the filters.

[Feldkurat_Katz]

There is also an important social component to this problem that must not be overlooked. The ugly truth is that a good percentage of spam is pornographic in nature. I'm not just talking about messages that say, "If you're over 18, click here." I'm talking about text desciptions and images of some of the most graphic and perverse pornography you could ever imagine, including beastiality, child pornography (perhaps simulated but revolting nonetheless), S&M, scatology (sexual pleasure derived from feces and urine), homosexual acts, rape, etc. Actual IMAGES of this stuff delivered daily into your home for you and your family to see, courtesy of the spammers.

Also, the spammers don't particularly care whether the address is a US one. Foreigners get all that kinky stuff in their mailboxes, which creates image of Americans as sex-obsessed philistines.

[steve-b]

How would you like it if someone sent your child graphic photos like this via US Postal Mail

Again -- people normally go to jail for doing what the spammers get away with doing as a matter of course. Whazzup with that?

[jalisco555]

It gets even worse than that. Say you click on a message with an innocent title and then are sent to a porn site. You have porn on your hard drive. Say the IRS decides to investigate you for some reason and seizes your computer. You'll get to read about yourself in the paper a few days later, made out to look like a pervert.

[ContentiousObjector]

scatology (sexual pleasure derived from feces and urine),

is that a joke and I a missing the punchline or are you serious?