There are millions of ways to spell Viagra. Carsten Arnold tried them all in an effort to stop spammers from sending junk e-mail to Canada Wide Magazines & Communications, the $25 million company he works for. Then he gave up. "Some days I wish I could just unplug the whole bloody Internet," fumes Arnold, information-technology manager for the 100-employee publisher in Barnaby, B.C. Those unwanted commercial e-mails are more than tasteless nuisances. They slow business. "It's a huge load on our e-mail server. It takes forever for e-mails to come through or go out," says Arnold, estimating that the clog slows e-mail correspondence by at least an hour a day. Worse, spam can be destructive: It's the primary means to spread viruses between computers.

By Randy Barrett at Business Week.

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