In what some see as a perfect example of the evidence of cosmic retribution, an avalanche of spam has crashed British Internet service provider Pipex's servers, and stopped delivery of e-mail to its million-plus users for the past week. [Wired]

Ben Johnson has been sending e-mail for months from his Hotmail account, but he just discovered that some of them were diverted to the trash before arriving at their destination. [CNET.com]

The auction giant's new system that was designed to limit spam is forcing some sellers to weed through even more junk mail to find legitimate messages from bidders. [c|net]

Some popular free Web services are playing both sides of the fence when it comes to protecting consumers from pesky marketers, offering to block junk e-mail while they help advertisers push promotions into customers' in-boxes. [CNET.com]

Two Los Angeles men are to go to jail for their part in a bulk email scam which duped 12, 000 people and severely impacted the operations of several large US ISPs. [The Register]

European telecommunication ministers have agreed that unsolicited e-mail and wireless text messages should be prohibited under a new data protection law.

UUNet customers have been left stranded without access to their email for the last 36 hours after the outfit took a "very big hit" from spammers earlier this week. [The Register]

Spam costs Net users a whopping E10 billion ($9.33 billion) a year, according to the European Commission. [The Register]

Internet subscribers world-wide are unwittingly paying an estimated €10 billion a year in connection costs just to receive "junk" e-mails, according to a study undertaken for the European Commission.

MSN has signed up with Brightmail to stop its email users getting spammed. The ISP will offer its five million email users in the US the option of Brightmail's Anti-Spam Solution. [The Register]