While spam levels are still on the rise, it seems that e-mail users are less bothered by it. According to a new Pew Internet report, the amount of people who identify spam as a big problem in their online lives has dropped nearly 10 percent since 2003, when the study was originally conducted.

The report points out two main reasons for the shift - a decrease in the "most offensive kind of spam" and the fact that people are becoming more knowledgeable about handling spam. E-mail users' sophistication in canning spam has grown, with 71 percent reporting that they use filters to block unwanted messages and less than one quarter saying they have clicked on a link in spam mail in order to get more information.

Even though we are learning to live with it, spam is still taking a toll on our view of e-mail - over half of those polled, the report says, admit to losing trust in e-mail due to spam mail.