A new anti-spam service launched with much fanfare this week is facing some technical hurdles out of the gate and frustration from the community it relies on to fight junk mail.

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.

In September, more than 17 percent of all e-mail traveling across the Internet could be classified as spam, according to data collected by UK e-mail service provider MessageLabs. The company's figures are presented in its latest monthly report.

A coalition of consumer groups plans to ask the federal government to rescue people from the deluge of unwanted commercial mail that clogs their inboxes and sucks up their time.

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.

AT&T WorldNet this week activated a risky spam-filtering technique that it shortly had to defuse after subscribers discovered they were losing legitimate e-mail.

Antispam company Habeas is suing bulk e-mailers, accusing them of using its poetry without permission in an unusual use of trademark law to clamp down on spammers.

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.

Antivirus company Trend Micro is jumping into the antispam fray, unveiling new software it hopes will help information technology managers protect their workers from an increasing barrage of unwanted messages.