• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, June 1, 2007

The feds this week arrested alleged Spam King Robert Soloway of Seattle, charging him with mail fraud, wire fraud, e-mail fraud, money laundering and other crimes.

The government charges that the 27-year-old Soloway is responsible for more than 90 million unwanted messages in the last three months alone. He allegedly made $1.6 million from 2003 through last year; at least some of that money allegedly came from software he sold that helps other people send spam.

But his arrest doesn't appear likely to make much of an impact on people's inboxes, according to the Associated Press. Consider, email security company IronPort told the Associated Press that 70 billion spam messages were sent Thursday, the day after Soloway's arrest. That figure was unchanged from two weeks prior. It's also almost double last May's 36 billion spam emails per day.

Also, while Soloway was once on the Spamhaus list of the top 10 spammers, he lost his spot a while ago to overseas spammers.

Despite efforts to enforce spam laws in court, it's clear spam is simply too profitable for the authorities to easily stop it -- especially when spammers operate abroad.

The reality is, while the government and email service provides can target the supply-side of spam, they also need to do more to discourage consumers from sending money to spammers. After all, unlike spyware or viruses --which can hijack people's computers -- most spam only serves its purpose when consumers respond to it.