The sun was setting on Laura Betterly's six-bedroom house as she reviewed a pair of outgoing e-mail messages one last time. Satisfied, she moved her cursor to the "send" icon and clicked. . .
The sun was setting on Laura Betterly's six-bedroom house as she reviewed a pair of outgoing e-mail messages one last time. Satisfied, she moved her cursor to the "send" icon and clicked.

"It's that simple," Ms. Betterly said triumphantly, swiping her palms. She had just dispatched e-mail messages to 500,000 strangers. Half saw the subject line: "Don't miss your chance to win 2002 Lexus RX300." The other half saw: "Win a trip to Nascar!"

Ms. Betterly's messages joined the roughly two billion other unsolicited commercial e-mails that hit in-boxes around the world every day. The company she runs from her home, Data Resource Consulting Inc., sends out as many as 60 million such messages a month. That puts the 41-year-old single mother in the most hated breed on the Internet. She sends spam.

The link for this article located at WallStreetJournal is no longer available.