Vnunet.com reports that Spamhaus predicts that, at the current rate of increase, 95% of all email traffic will be spam by the middle of 2006.

I believe that blacklists and filters are not enough. Eventually, we'll need to move to use social networks to our advantage to include FOAF in an email solution that filters spam. Most current current filtering systems work on identifying spam and then let everything else through. We need the reverse: a method of authenticating/identifying good email and block everything else. By using our address books and creating a system for connecting public friends lists, we can screen for likely good email based on who we know and who those people know.

FOAF authenticated email will then automatically be loaded into our email inboxes and subfolders. Non-FOAF authenticated email will be filtered based on public blacklists, other public whitelists, and keyword filters to suggest very likely non-SPAM email. What's left--mostly spam--could have automatic email replies sent which allow the original sender to authenticate themselves using captcha. In the event that FOAF authenicated email allowed through spam because a friend of a friend was authenticating a spammer, our addressbooks would also contain blacklists where we could select to ban a friend of a friend as a likely good email referrer.