Spammers wreak havoc on millions of people for one simple reason: It's a money-making enterprise, and it's easy to do.

Microsoft Research has a piece just out that explains that if a hundred thousand people receive a single spam email broadcast, only one recipient needs to spend $11.00 on whatever they're selling to make the effort profitable.

It's hard to make spamming unprofitable when the costs are so low, so instead one solution would be to make it awfully inconvenient. The research article contains some interesting ideas about how to counter spam in ways that might actually stick.

The article is a good one for anyone interested in the technical, social and geographical detailed of spamming.