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The other major approach to preventing spam is to block any messages sent from computers and e-mail addresses known to be used by spammers. This is harder than it seems because the spammers are constantly changing their accounts and are adept at methods to make up fake return addresses and hide behind private accounts. That does not prevent the big service providers, and an army of spam vigilantes, from creating blacklists of offenders.

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These blacklists, however, often also block legitimate companies and individuals from sending e-mail. That is because the spammers find ways to hijack unprotected computers to relay their messages, thus hiding their true origins.

In the earlier, more innocent days of the Internet, many computers were set up to relay e-mail sent by any other user, anonymously, just to give a helping hand to those with connection problems. Now there still are computers set up to be what is known as an open relay, even though such machines are largely used by spammers.

Another approach to limiting spam, which is favored by big marketers, is to create a "white list" of approved senders, but this raises the question of who will compile such a list. A group of the companies that send e-mail on behalf of major corporations will put forward another proposal tomorrow that would allow senders to certify their identities in every e-mail message they send and report a rating of how much they comply with good mailing standards. Users and Internet service providers would then decide what sort of mail they choose to accept.

"We wanted to come up with a way of shining a big bright light on all those that want to stand in the light and say, `This is who I am, and I was that person yesterday, and I'll be that person tomorrow,' " said Hans Peter Brondmo, a senior vice president at Digital Impact, a major e-mail company and one of the developers of the proposal, known as project Lumos.

Rather than such a self-regulatory approach, the antispam legislation in the Senate would try to make many deceptive e-mail practices illegal. It would force commercial e-mail messages to identify the true sender, have an accurate subject line and offer recipients an easy way to remove their names from marketing lists. And it would impose fines for violators.

For her part, Ms. Sachs, the e-mail marketer, says that any such move would only end up making it harder to run a legitimate business.

"These antispammers should get a life," she said. "Do their fingers hurt too much from pressing the delete key? How much time does that really take from their day?"

By contrast, she said, "70 million people have bad credit. Guess what? Now I can't get mail through to them to help them."