When in 2004 Bill Gates' predicted that SPAM (junk e-mail) would be eradicated by 2006, we all laughed, yet left a gasp just in case he could be right (well, he is Bill Gates!). Two years on and we're still laughing:

"Sophos believes that the rumours of spam's death have been greatly exaggerated. The threat remains alive and kicking despite the increased action against spammers and constantly improving anti-spam software," Sophos said in its annual Security Threat Management report. "There's no end in sight for spam," Sophos said.

By November 2005, 13.5 percent of all spam received by Sophos was stock-related, a jump of 12.7 percentage points from 0.8 percent at the start of the year.

Spam pushing medical products was the most popular in 2005, and made up about 40 percent of all spam during 2005. Pornographic spam retained its position as the second-most common type of junk email.

To this day SPAM's greatest ally is the humble 'nubbin', a term used to describe many acknowledgeable types, yet in this case it represents the geniuses of the world that actually CLICK junk marketing mails.

Putting all the new laws and technology aside, the only reason SPAM still exists today is because it has a market. Sadly it only takes 1% of the Internet’s population to be tricked for the rest of us to suffer. More @ ZDNet.