WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Internet users beware -- within a couple of years you may have fewer opportunities to reduce your debt or increase your penis size.

Unwanted "spam" offers currently account for more than half of all e-mail traffic, but at least two high-tech executives say the torrent of pornography and unbelievably low mortgage rates could slow to a trickle by 2006.

Microsoft Corp . founder Bill Gates predicted the demise of unsolicited commercial e-mail at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Friday, according to a company spokesman.

His prediction was backed up on Monday by the head of a prominent anti-spam company.

"I believe we'll solve spam by the end of 2005," said Enrique Salem, president and chief executive of privately held Brightmail Inc., which scrubs spam for large Internet service providers like Verizon Communications and BellSouth Corp..

That may seem like wishful thinking to Internet users who have seen no drop in herbal Viagra offers since a new federal anti-spam law went into effect on January 1.

Salem said Brightmail numbers show that the proportion of spam has increased to around 60 percent of all e-mail, from 58 percent in December.

That figure should peak around 65 percent later this year and than start to decline as improved filtering techniques take hold and federal agents begin enforcing the new law, he said.

Brightmail rolled out a "reputation service" on Monday to profile e-mail sources and pinpoint those who send out spam. Mail from "clean" sources like friends and reputable businesses will pass unencumbered, while other addresses that have generated a large number of complaints will be blocked.

Combined with identity-verification services being developed by Time Warner Inc's America Online and other large Internet providers, the reputation service should block enough spam to make the business unprofitable, Salem said.

At Davos, Gates outlined several other techniques to discourage spam, a company spokesman said. Spammers could be slowed down through "computational puzzles" that suck up computer processing power or require a human to solve them. Another approach could require senders of unsolicited e-mail to pay a fee unless it is waived by the receiver.    Continued ...

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