If the feds want to spy on internet activity, they should start with the perpetrators of this crap and leave the surfing habits of private citizens PRIVATE! I am offended and outraged to constantly find this garbage in my email and seldom use my yahoo email box any more because of it. I would not allow a child access to the internet that wasn't strictly supervised AT ALL TIMES!
If the feds want to spy on internet activity, they should start with the perpetrators of this crap and leave the surfing habits of private citizens PRIVATE! It occurs to me that sending spam is a perfect way to disseminate a coded message while covering one's tracks -- the sender hires the spammer through the usual cut-out, paying cash or a check on a throwaway account; the recipient is utterly hidden in the crapflood.
Also, a spamming operation is a natural for money-laundering, since the huge number of targets makes it easy to generate as many or as few bogus "sales" as are required to explain away any given amount of money.