Dude — you have no idea what you are talking about. Spam was so overwhelming in the late 1990s/early 2000s that it literally threatened the viability of email as a medium. I started the first major anti-spam company, Brightmail. We monitored and tracked the rise of spam. We implemented technologies at major email sites (Hotmail, Earthlink, AT&T, etc) that made spam what is today — an annoyance. And I don’t mean the advertising emails from Amazon and others you do business with. I’m talking about ads for porn sites, fake viagra, Nigerian banking scams, and phishing attacks. Yes, they still sometimes get through, but its occasional and rare. Back in the day, you’d get many each day.