For several years now companies have been focusing on faster and smarter software to be installed on your PC or on your servers that will detect spam through increasingly more complex algorithms. The ingenuity behind these products can't be argued with. The problem was that as spam filters became better so did quality of bulk email software used by spammers. The battle to fight spam was spiralling out of control.

There's an old scientific principle called Occams Razor. It simply means that all things being equal most simple solution is often best one.

Somebody somewhere realized that there was a simple solution to vast majority of spam. Spammers email millions of people each day. This is an automated process that they can't possibly monitor manually. Enter challenge response spam email filtering.

The best place to begin would be to explain to you exactly what spam mail is. Spam is basically just unsolicited commercial emails that companies send to your inbox.

There are a lot of ways these companies get your email address. You may have signed up for a newsletter or promotions with one of them, or you may have ordered a product or service that requires registration from a website first.

It is common for companies to share their mailing lists with their affiliate companies. It’s one of benefits to having affiliations. The only problem is that most companies hide this knowledge in their “terms and agreements” of their websites. They count on fact that most people do not read all way through them. Of course since it is mentioned somewhere in their website, it is perfectly legal.