Among life's many hassles, the most recently invented is e-mail spam. Nowadays every single e-mail arrives sandwiched between garbage that must be cleared away before getting to friends, family and business. Even those few foolish people who follow up on spam probably hate spam. However, restricting spam may not be as simple as installing new software. Great care is needed to ensure the cure is not worse than the disease.

A spam-free inbox may be only a distant hope, but last week the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry announced a plan to revise the law preventing unsolicited e-mail from reaching mobile phones and personal computers. The proposal calls for making punishments stricter than those stipulated in the law enacted against spam in 2002 and then revised in 2005. Sadly, as any mobile phone or computer user knows, these measures may be too little, too late.

The numbers are already staggering. Chiba police recently found a case of nearly 5.4 billion spam mails sent by one abuser over a two-month period. Worldwide estimates of the amount of spam sent in any 24-hour period range from 60 to 90 billion. Many spam trackers place this year's spam percentage at 70 percent of total e-mail messages. That's up from 8 percent in 2001. With three pieces of spam for every one real e-mail, the delete key may be the most used on keyboards all over the world.