Spam menace drives man to issue death threats

A Silicon Valley computer programmer got so fed up with the daily dose of spam that landed in his inbox and almost rendered his computer unusable for about two months that he threatened to send a "package full of Anthrax spores" to the company he blames for bombarding his computer.

Charles Booker was arrested on Thursday and released on $75000 bond for making threats to the staff of a Canadian company.

He threatened to torture and kill the employees, disable an employee with a bullet and torture him with a power drill and an ice pick, to hunt down and castrate the employees unless they removed him from their email list.

Mr. Booker acknowledged that he had behaved badly but said he had been receiving a barrage of advertising and email for the past two months promising to enlarge his sexual organ.

Whether it offers the chance to enlarge or reduce parts of the body in improbable ways or amazing opportunities to make money without doing any work, spam is now part of a computer user's daily life. It is thought to account for about half of all emails sent over the internet.