We’ve all read the usual year?s end lists, like “Best Movies of 2002,” but how about the most obnoxious Spam? 2002 was a big year for Spam?30% of the e-mail we received were unsolicited ads, and it’s predicted that Spam will make up 50% of all e-mail in 2003. Did you receive some of these messages??
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The holiday season has increased spam traffic by 20%, bringing a tsunami of spam to your computer. “What’s the cost of sending an e-mail? It’s almost free. So [spam] is a way of getting your message out at a low cost. The economic side is favorable,” says Brightmail president Enrique Salem. Spam made up 40% of all Internet e-mail traffic in 2002, up from just 8% in 2001.
Brightmail, which helps companies identify and block spam, processed over 16 billion spam messages in the past 30 days, a 21% increase over the number of spam messages blocked in the 30 days before Thanksgiving. Brightmail gets its data from decoy e-mail accounts that are specially designed to attract spam messages.
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Hormel Foods Corporation, the creators of Spam, is teaming up with General Motors to make car parts out of pork and turkey byproducts. They will supply GM with a binding agent, known as “GMBond,” that is made from animal protein collagen and will be used to make the molds that are used to cast metal parts.
“Who would have guessed that a food product would be used in the production of your automobile’s engine block?” said Joel Johnson, president of Hormel. Richard Schreck, GM’s principle research scientist, said the collagen binder will help reduce manufacturing costs.
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