A group of e-mail marketers on Tuesday set up an Internet forum for people to air grievances about spam filters--which can swallow legitimate messages along with the targeted commercial come-ons.

Spam has become such a menace to the Internet that the Federal Trade Commission should take swift steps to stanch the flow of bulk e-mail, three consumer groups said Wednesday.

When Emily Sachar got back from vacation recently, she had an e-mail inbox full of hundreds of messages. Unfortunately, most of them were spam.

Recent court decisions upholding laws against unsolicited e-mails will increasingly focus attention on a few individuals who send out the majority of such unwanted advertising messages.

Watch out--the spam choking your e-mail in-box may be loaded with software that lets marketers track your moves online, and you may not even be aware that you've been bugged.

The Direct Marketing Association has created mandatory ground rules for members sending sales pitches via e-mail, a move designed to help avoid a government crackdown on commercial messages.

Microsoft is turning up the heat on spam, filing a lawsuit to go after people it suspects of having harvested e-mail addresses from its Hotmail servers to spam subscribers.

Microsoft's MSN said its e-mail services had blocked some incoming messages from rival Internet service providers earlier this week, after their networks were mistakenly banned as sources of junk mail.

Lewd e-mail promoting pornography may soon pose more than just a technical challenge in the ongoing fight against spam--experts say it's set to become an acute legal problem, too.

When Josh Tinnin tried to send e-mail to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission this month, he received an unwelcome surprise: He couldn't.