E-mail at a Crossroads

摘要

E-mail is arguably the most pervasive application on the Internet, but it's under attack by an onslaught of abuses that are eroding its usefulness. If not reined in soon, these threats could chance the nature of the Internet as we know it. Problems plaguing e-mail and the Internet in general have hit epidemic proportions. Few users have escaped the insidious nature of spam, and more are falling victim to phishing, a growing form of online identity theft. Viruses often carry malicious code able to turn an unsuspecting user's PC into a "zombie" that, when summoned, becomes a spam-blasting mail server. These aren't problems that a new version of Microsoft Exchange or some additional disk space can fix. The Internet community is hard at work developing technology responses to these threats, while U.S. regulators seek to use the few legislative tools they've been given to crack down on e-mail crime. Unwanted e-mail has become such a global headache that international organizations are spearheading efforts toward multinational anti-spam laws and regulatory bodies.