Good anti-spam news

Though the flood of junk email in our in-boxes continues unabated, anti-spam efforts are getting tougher. For example, there is the first criminal prosecution of spammers - against a brother and sister in Virginia who'd "amassed a fortune" in sales via spam, reports the BBC and many other tech news outlets. And the US's Internet giants - AOL, EarthLink, MSN, and Yahoo - teamed up for the second time this year to sue spammers in several states, CNET reports. CNET adds that one of AOL's lawsuits is the first to target junk messages our IM-ing kids are probably seeing more of: "spim," "unwanted messages sent through instant-messaging programs or chat rooms."