Actually, such technology is available, but it means moving people from a purely free (and wild) email system to a private business network, such as what's offered at www.yozons.com.

With a modern technology that bases messaging around XML data, with security built in from the ground up, with added electronic signature capabilities, such a system can (and already does) exist.

With authenticated parties, messages sent through Signed & Secured are encrypted from end-to-end, without requiring any special software on either end (or worrying about PKI and digital certificates). People know who is sending them messages (no spoofing of email headers), and senders know who has received their messages. Digital signature technology ensures the integrity of the electronic records, like contracts or sales agreements, for the long-term, yet it's as easy to use as web-based email, yet requires no more software or encryption expertise.

Otherwise, fixing spam/virus problems in regular email is a monumental task that is doomed to fail. Email is based on the SMTP protocol, and it has proliferated wildly. It's success is truly remarkable because it's so useful. Unfortunately, it was designed in a university and laboratory environment, in which techies and scientists originally flourished.

Unfortunately, SMTP has work-arounds, but implementing these layers of hacks on top of it simply is not practical. There are simply too many email servers with too many email accounts (over 500 million at last count) to make a cutover feasible. It would be like trying to introduce secure phone technology into the current telephone network. It's not that it can't be done, only that it's impractical. There are simply too many non-secure phones, phone switches, PBXes, etc. that make use of the network, so if you add your secure phone to the mix, you won't be able to talk to anybody else who hasn't also added a compatible secure phone. The idea is good and the technology exists, but the foundation wasn't designed to support it and so it's effectively not going to happen.

The same is true of email. Fixing it won't work. But replacing it using a scheme that allows anybody with an email account to also make use of it, albeit not via email, is the solution, and that's exactly what the Yozons Business Private Network is all about. No spam, no viruses, no forged headers trying to trick you into divulging secret information, no Microsoft Outlook to cause immeasurable havoc and harm to networks and computers due to sloppy programming. As you suggest, such a system is available, so even if a "bad apple" is found, that user can be immediately removed from the system and prevented from further causing harm -- not to mention since the user was authenticated, you have a much better chance of tracking that person down and pressing charges if they have, in fact, violated the law.

I should have mentioned that there are not enough ethical crackers, and with constantly changing and spoofing of email and IP addresses, tracking the real sender is incredibly hard. After all, if you attacked me just because you received spam from my email address, you'd be attacking the wrong person. The theft of email identities is imply too easy to accomplish to make it a reliable way to establish who committed the wrongdoing.

You can get a totally free and excellent spam killer at http://popfile.sourceforge.net/

Spam creates more job for hackers. They are often employed by companies to create program or build fire wall to stop spam.