Legislative measures failed stop Spam up till now. Since Spam is basically a human problem you can do something about it using anti-spam technology. Anti-spam software is the only thing we have now to block undesired messages. Its not a foolproof method however. Lets see why.
Most anti-spam software use inspection techniques to detect Spam emails. The anti-spam program analyzes incoming messages and checks the message content against a known profile of Spam. Something like it asks a question Does this message look as Spam?, and based on that analysis the anti-spam program takes the final decision to allow the message or block it. At best this approach can delete most of the Spam emails allowing only a few ones getting through.
The analysis method is not as reliable as it seems. If you slacken the rules, youll get much Spam in your inbox. If the rules are too strict, youll stop all the Spam with the risk to block quite legitimate messages. A legitimate email incorrectly blocked as spam is called a false positive. If you get a lot of false positives, you will need to read all the Spam emails looking for good messages among the rubbish. But this completely disproves...