As we all are painfully aware, spam has incresed 38.5% this year according to MessageLabs a mail filtering service. This represents roughly 34% of email sent or one message in 2.6. Viruses as attachments to emails have also increased about 13% over the previous month. MessageLabs offers some interesting charts on the flow of viruses, spam and pornogrphy through email systems.
SPAM revisited
Much to the chagrin of Hormel Foods, maker of the canned "Shoulder Pork and hAM"/"SPiced hAM" luncheon meat, the term "spam" has today come to mean network abuse, particularly junk E-mail and massive junk postings to USENET groups.
As described in Wired, "according to Hormel, culpability for the adoption of "spam" as a synonym for junk e-mail rests squarely with British Comedy troupe Monty Python. It all started with an old Monty Python skit in which a group of Vikings sing a chorus of "SPAM, SPAM, SPAM..." at increasing volumes in an attempt to drown out other conversation. The analogy to modern-day spam applied, Hormel said, because unsolicited e-mail is seen as drowning out normal discourse on the Internet."
Brad Templeton also offers another view of the history of spam.