Three years ago, a close friend began a job at a medium-sized company, jumping back into the corporate world after years of freelancing. The first thing she noticed was the e-mail was almost spam free. While she would still get 50 unnecessary messages each day in her freelance mailbox, going to work was like a breath of fresh air.

This made a real difference in the work environment, similar to having a clean washroom or free premium coffee. She made it a habit to effusively compliment the IT director whenever they met, which was usually at holiday parties or company picnics.

But things changed. A few months back she received a handful of vitamin ads in a single day, followed by a series of stock-tip messages. She forwarded them to the IT guy, thinking that he would be interested in a possible system failure and that he might be able to fix the situation. Instead, she got a snarling message in return, berating her for clogging his inbox with spam and then instructing her to redirect (not delete) all future spams to a special junk-mail destination.