SURESH RAMASUBRAMANIAN maintains the barrier between 30 million e-mail users' inboxes and a sleazy world of Nigerian scam artists, naked teenage nymphomaniacs and dubious offers to enhance the sexual assets of men.
The anti-spam specialist for Hong Kong-based Outblaze deals with 50 million unwanted e-mail messages every day - or about 600 pieces of junk mail a second.
Mr Ramasubramanian is respectfully described in the industry as an 'anti-spam legend', but even he admits that the fight to stem the flood of virtual garbage clogging up the Internet is a battle that may never be won.
'It's like living in an apartment in Hong Kong; you accept that there are going to be cockroaches. If you go on the Internet, there is going to be spam,' he said.
Spam has been around since the first commercial messages were posted to a newsgroup in 1995. But the ever-increasing volume has turned an annoyance into a major headache for Internet users and companies that provide e-mail.
Outblaze spokesman Ibrahim El-Mouelhy estimates that up to 80 per cent of the 65 million messages his company handles each day are spam. Last year the ratio was 50:50.