Bill Gates famously predicted a few weeks ago Microsoft would eliminate spam within 2 years. One strategy was for the sender of an email to have to pay a small ‘bond’ to the recipient each time an email was sent. If the emails was legitimate, the recipient would refund the bond.

Now the OECD has decided they don’t share Bill’s vision. A new OECD report says “spam is dangerous, expensive and growing on an epidemic scale that threatens confidence in the internet and e-commerce”.

What might be suprising is the assertion:

“One anti-spam company, Spamhaus, says that only about 180 known individuals, working in “spam gangs”, are behind all spam received in Europe and the United States. “