This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.

Ah, Spam. Doesn't the word make your mouth water? Or maybe not. Either way, Spam must be given its due. It is the most famous of the mystery meats, those exciting concoctions of the meat-packing industry. It has been sold by the billions of cans since its invention in 1937. It helped feed the Allies and win World War Two. It is central to a Monty Python skit about Vikings in a greasy spoon, and now a Broadway musical. It provides a name for unwanted e-mail. It theoretically lasts forever. And it is a product of the Hormel Foods Corporation (NYSE: HRL).

Spam is made in several places, but its ancestral home and main production facility is in Austin, Minnesota, sometimes called Spam Town. Austin is the small town south of Minneapolis that is home to Hormel, proud maker of all things Spam. (I should note that Hormel would prefer that we write "SPAM luncheon meat" but I don't think we'll take that suggestion too seriously.)

Hormel has long dominated the town of Austin, and not just because the Spam Museum is located there. It is by far the largest employer in town and the majority of workers in Austin work for Hormel, producing many of the company's meaty foods. Hormel's roots in the town go deep. Drawn by the town's good rail and river access, George A. Hormel opened a meat packing business there in 1891, and his small company eventually grew into the billion-dollar colossus that today owns a dizzying array of food brands, from Chi-Chi's and Valley Fresh to Dinty Moore and, of course, Spam. (Does it seem fair that one company gets to own both Dinty Moore and Spam?)

In tough financial times, certain food products and food preparation ideas seem to gain increasing favor with consumers. People try to find ways to prepare nutritious and interesting meals while gaining greater purchasing power from their hard-earned dollars.

Just the other day, some of us bloggers were engaged in a lively email chat regarding some of our tried-and-true strategies for stretching our grocery dollars. As you can guess, ramen noodles almost immediately took center stage. I was entertained with stories of the many ways that the slender pasta can be made quite appealing. For instance, if you take any brand of chunky salsa, cut it 50% with water, add a sliced hot dog and pour the heated mixture over the noodles, it's really a very delicious and satisfying meal.

As the discussion ebbed, I couldn't help but be amazed that no one had mentioned SPAM, by Hormel Foods Corp. (NYSE: HRL). Surely, I thought, these people must know about the illustrious history of SPAM! Could they ignore the fact that SPAM has carried literally millions of people though hard times since prior to World War II? Though there is probably a ratio of three SPAM jokes to every one SPAM recipe, the fact remains that Hormel's SPAM, in all its variations, still sells exceptionally well. It sells even better as times get tough, as indicated by a recent Associated Press overview.

The Associated Press reports that Spam sales are on the rise. Cans of Spam -- a pig byproduct -- are flying off the shelf as consumers are turning more to lunch meats and other lower-cost foods to extend their already stretched food budgets.

As I posted, consumers are going on a recession diet. I had not thought of Spam as a way to play this trend. But its sales are up 10.6% and its manufacturer, Hormel Foods (NYSE: HRL) has seen its profits rise 14%. But the price of Spam is up more than Hormel's stock, with the average 12 oz. can costing about $2.62. That's an increase of 17 cents, or nearly 7% from the same time last year.

Despite rising prices, Spam seems like a good alternative to consumers. AP quotes Kimberly Quan, a stay-at-home mom of three, who has been feeding her family more Spam in the last six months as she tries to make her food budget go further. "It's canned meat and it's in the cupboard and if everything else is gone from the fridge, it's there."

It's pretty rare that a victory in a $230 million lawsuit is only a moral victory, but Myspace, which is owned by News Corp. (NYSE: NWS), has won just such a case.

The company sued Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines for spamming the social networking site's users with phishing schemes and links to websites offering merchandise for sale or paid advertising. A federal judge in Los Angeles ruled in favor of MySpace after the con-men failed to show up for a hearing.

Why are the damages so high? CAN-SPAM, a 2003 law, entitled providers to $100 in damages for every spam message sent -- and the amount triples when the spam is sent "willfully and knowingly."

Perhaps this will send a message to would-be spammers that they shouldn't mess with MySpace. But the spammers are nowhere to be found, and it's hard to imagine that they have anything like $230 million to pay the judgment, or even the $4.7 million in attorneys fees that the judge awarded MySpace.

The Justice Department recently made headlines with its indictment of stock spam honcho Alan Ralsky, whom it accused of running a "spamming operation that, as alleged in the indictment, largely focused on running a stock pump and dump scheme, whereby the defendants sent spam touting thinly traded Chinese penny stocks, drove up their stock price, and reaped profits by selling the stock at artificially inflated prices."

Gary Weiss provides his usual skeptical insight, pointing out that what the "Justice Department doesn't say is that Ralsky was hardly holed up in some cave in Afghanistan. He was operating out in the open, and was even the subject of an article in The New York Times, for Pete's sake. The Spamhaus Project has a file on this man a mile long, and notes that the FBI raided his house three years ago."

The fact that it took the feds so long to do something -- and the fact that the SEC never did anything -- is interesting and indicative of the old saying that "the wheels of justice grind slowly."

Here's the lesson investors should take from this: the fact that no one has been arrested and trading hasn't been suspended doesn't mean that nothing is amiss. Investors cannot rely on the SEC to protect them from fraudulent investments.

The Israeli company Commtouch (NASDAQ: CTCH), a leading provider of email defense systems, announced today that all proposals presented to shareholders on its proxy statement for the annual meeting of shareholders held on December 14, 2007 were overwhelmingly approved, including the reverse stock split (by over 92% of the voting shares).

I guess the question is whether this is good, bad, or insignificant news? While in some cases reverse splits signal that a company is at the end of the line, in Commtouch's case that is not the case. The company continues to execute its business model well, and as more and more defense is needed to stop spammers, Commtouch should continue to grow. The company made this move in order to reduce the number of shares, as well as get the share price up over $5, where it would be open to more institutional interest.

It seems that this is a positive move and the fact that over 90% of the votes were in favor is a good sign. But what's really important is that it continues to sign deals and execute. If it does that, the stock will take care of itself.

Aaron Katsman is the lead Portfolio Manager and Managing Director of America Israel Investment Associates, LLC. and Senior Editor of IsraelNewsletter.com. Disclosure: Writer owns stock and is long CTCH. He has no position in any stock mentioned as of 12/13707.

Commtouch (NASDAQ: CTCH), a leading provider of email defense systems, announced today that Check Point Software (NASDAQ: CHKP) has entered into a licensing agreement with the email firm. Commtouch's defense works on a three-pronged approach. Reputation service for blocking unwanted mail traffic at the perimeter, significantly reducing the necessary IT resources for handling email; Zero-Hour(TM) Virus Outbreak Protection to complement traditional anti-virus solutions; and Anti-spam, which works against all formats and languages including Asian languages, image spam and attachment spam.

Speaking to the importance of this deal, CEO Gideon Mantel said, "Check Point's choice of Commtouch as the best solution for its customers after a period of rigorous testing further validates our technology and is an important milestone for Commtouch. Commtouch is the only technology provider of three layers of email defense that, together, ensure continued effectiveness in the face of constantly changing threats. We believe this important and strategic agreement will positively impact our business."

Commtouch's business has been growing rapidly. The company had set a goal for 30 new deals for all of 2007, and it had almost achieved that goal by the end of October. Clearly there is a need for email spam protection; for investors looking at a small company making headway in this field, the stock may be a very attractive long-term play.

Aaron Katsman is the lead Portfolio Manager and Managing Director of America Israel Investment Associates, LLC. and Senior Editor of IsraelNewsletter.com. Disclosure: Writer owns stock and is long both CTCH and CHKP , as of 12/10/07.

According to a report issued by Help Net Security, as many as 19 of every 20 emails are spam. Thanks to good filters on my various accounts, I don't see much of this, so I was astounded to see how those most loathsome of subhumans, the spammers, have taken over the email world.

The report is full of bad news for those of us dependent on electronic communications. One attack during the third quarter of 2007 used more than 11,000 "zombie" IP addresses (computers taken over via virus infections) to unleash a tsunami of penis enhancement and stock tip emails.

The types of malicious spam are also evolving. Just a few months ago, I was receiving stock tip spam in the form of text saved as an image. Now that my troops have learned to discard those, the sleazebags have gone to using other file types, like PDF, Excel and Word files, to entice me to open them and thereby infect my PC.

Yahoo, Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) and eBay, Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) are partnering up this holiday season to try and keep all those nasty but legit-looking email messages out of your Yahoo! Mail inbox. Yahoo! is by far the world's most popular web-based email service and I can only imagine the effort it takes to sniff out fraudulent and phishing email messages from tens of millions of inboxes every day.

In many cases, Yahoo! Mail users will receive official-looking messages that appears to come from eBay or its online payment division, PayPal. Those who are fooled into divulging personal information like passwords and account sign-in information usually have a large headache cleaning up the identity theft mess later. But, what if those unofficial email messages never arrived in your inbox to begin with?

Last last week, the three companies (PayPal is a wholly-owned eBay subsidiary) announced that the DomainKeys e-mail authentication system would be used to block malicious email messages from the inboxes of Yahoo! Mail users. Yahoo! stated that the upgrade would occur over its global email network for the next few weeks, allowing it to verify the domain from which email messages arrive. In other words, those Russia-based fraud emails that look like real eBay communications may soon be blocked for good.

This is a great initiative between the largest email provider and one of the largest commerce sites on the entire internet, and it's perfectly timed for the holiday e-commerce season that's already underway. Now, Yahoo! needs to market this new partnership in every way possible to let customers know what it is and how it can help them. Something like this does no deserve to be just working behind the scenes.

Regulators from countries including the United States, Canada, Nigeria, United Kingdom and the Netherlands collaborated in a tremendous crackdown on internet con-artists. The U.S. Postal Service announced that more than $2.1 billion in counterfeit checks have been seized, and 77 people have been arrested.

Pretty much everyone has received spam from these crooks -- often written in very formal-sounding (but poor) English, an email will arrive in your inbox lamenting the sad tale of an exiled Nigerian Prince who has tens of millions in savings but no way to access it. If you can just send a few thousand, he'll be able to get the money and, as thanks for your kindness, you get to keep half!

If these were legit, it would be one of the greatest returns on investment in history -- aside from the deal that gave the Dutch Manhattan for about $24 worth of beads. The problem is that these emails are never legit.

While law enforcement should be commended for their work, there's another side to this. Is someone who sends a down-and-out stranger a few hundred dollars in the hope of getting a few million back really an innocent victim? It might not be as predatory as the con-artist sending the email but it also can hardly be called generous.

This looks like a classic example of the old maxim that you can never cheat an honest man.

With more than two billion cell phone users in the world, advertising over mobile phones is most likely a way of the future. But it seems like every week I receive a silly, spam-like text message encouraging me to purchase overpriced ringtones or use some other expensive service. Like many cell phone users, I rarely (if ever) take action from these ads and I find them brutally annoying.

Interestingly, a recent Associated Press article reveals several new ways advertisers are targeting the mobile phone market without being so irritating. For example, cell phone users have been offered services that allow them to find the nearest restaurant, convenience store, and so forth. While this service is clearly useful for the phone-owner, the service-operators can also profit handsomely by selling spaces to the restaurants, convenience stores, and so on.

With the growing saturation of mobile internet use, advertising over mobile internet pages could also make sense. But it's important for advertisers to remember that excessively-commercialized websites are a powerful turn-off to readers and users. Therefore, I'd bet that mobile websites would be limited to one or two advertisements per page. According to the AP article, this mobile internet advertising business has taken off in the Japanese market where most of the country's cell phone owners also have mobile internet access.

Going forward, more realistic and useful advertising methods are going to become more prominent in the mobile phone space. However, mobile phone network operators must be careful with what advertising is permitted. Moves further into the spam category will incense consumers, while moves towards useful and profitable advertising will probably sit well with most consumers.

See also:
Can AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ) make money on cell phone ads?

In a move that many consider to be long overdue, the FBI appears to finally be getting serious about spammers and their corrupt and deceitful practices. According to a press report on the issue, the FBI has 70 active investigations looking into spam related crimes.

The FBI is not only targeting spammers using networks of computers to send their messages, but it's also going to start getting more aggressive with stock spam campaigns. On Tuesday, the FBI even pressed charges against two Texas stock spammers who pumped 13 different penny stocks according to reports.

Anyone with an email and any interest in finance seems to find himself loaded with spam emails promoting stocks with guaranteed growth and gains to come. In fact I received a stock-pumping email just yesterday. Below is a sample from the email received, I've left out the company's name to ensure I don't give the pumpers the attention they're craving:

Spam, Hormel Foods' (NYSE: HRL) legendary pork-based canned meat product, is still a staple in Hawaii, a fact that has not escaped the attention of fast food giants McDonald's (NYSE: MCD) and Burger King (NYSE:BKC). In its island restaurants, McDonalds offers the McSpam sandwich, and in 2002 added the pigalicious treat to its breakfast menu. Its Spam platter consists of Spam, scrambled eggs and rice.

Now Burger King has jumped into the Spam war by launching its "Spam in the A.M." campaign. Hawaii BKs are offering a similar platter selection, as well as Spam on a croissant or biscuit.

According to the AP, Hawaii is the leading consumer of Spam, averaging six cans per person annually. Before you jump to conclusions, let me point out that, according to the CDC, in mainland U.S. states the percentage of adults overweight or obese ranges from 52.9% (Colorado) to 65.5% (Mississippi), while Hawaii reports only 49.5% of their residents fall into this class. And it's hard to imagine a Spam sandwich could be more damaging to one's waistline than BK's 730-calorie Enormous Omelet Sandwich, available throughout the U.S.

This morning Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) announced that it's buying aQuantive Inc. (NASDAQ: AQNT) for $6 billion, an 85% premium to its market price. Why is this deal happening? To compete with Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG).

Last year my firm conducted a client-sponsored study of the email marketing industry. The top performing company in that research was AQNT. After interviewing the senior executives there, it became clear that email marketing offers a compelling benefit for a corporate advertiser -- the ability to measure return on advertising.

The reason Microsoft wants this ability is to help it compete with GOOG for online advertising dollars. That's because AQNT's technology enables companies to track what happens to their spam. Specifically, AQNT's Avenue A service targets emails depending on observed online behavior.

We get all kinds of mail here at BloggingStocks, but few offer such a sure-fire, can't miss investment opportunity as this message, received a few days ago:

Name: Gospel
Subject: Looking for crude oil buyers

Dear sir/madam,

I am easnestly looking for potential companies/individuals that will buy crude oil product from Nigeria, No money invovled until the product is being tested
+2348032327677

I am, waiting for your urgent response

Gospel Anyatonwu

Remember, when you and Gospel hit it big, that you got your tip at BloggingStocks!

Disclaimer: Please, please do not follow tips in incorrect English. If they can't spell, they probably can't count either.