Critical Reasoning

my first comment about this question is that it is of, um, extremely substandard quality.

first of all, the writing is AWFUL. i really, truly, seriously hope that this is NOT a word-for-word transcription of the original question, because there are about 10 different errors in the writing of the passage. ugh.
please copy passages VERBATIM from the source.
if this passage really is verbatim, then you should run as fast as you can from the source from which you got it.

in fact, this is one of the worst boldface questions i've ever seen. where is this from?

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regarding the problem:

you will never see "inference that can be drawn FROM THE PASSAGE" on a boldface question.
simple reason:
INFERENCE FROM "X" means that you're DRAWING A CONCLUSION that is NOT PART OF "X".
therefore, if something is an "inference that can be drawn FROM THE PASSAGE", then, perforce, it wouldn't be in the passage at all.

i understand what the author of this question is trying to do here - i.e., what they actually mean is more like "inference that can be drawn from the premises" - but this is unacceptably sloppy writing.

you will also NEVER see the term "pre-evidence" on the gmat. no way, ever.
i don't even know what that's supposed to mean, although i think it's probably supposed to refer to what is more commonly called "indirect evidence". if anyone is interested in what that means, post back and i'll give more details.

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in any case, here's the one redeeming thing here: you should learn to distinguish "background statements" or "circumstances" from "evidence".

in particular:
EVIDENCE should pass the "THEREFORE TEST". meaning that, if something is to be called EVIDENCE, it should be able to be placed in a statement such as "X, therefore CONCLUSION".

if it's "X, therefore CONCLUSION", then X is called direct evidence.

if it's "X, therefore Y, therefore CONCLUSION", then X is called indirect evidence.

the first boldface is neither of these.
we CAN'T say "back in the day, people hardly got any spam, THEREFORE we should institute anti-spam regulations", so the first bold is not direct evidence.
we also CAN'T say "back in the day, people hardly got any spam, THEREFORE ______, THEREFORE we should institute anti-spam regulations", no matter what ______ is, so the first bold is not indirect evidence, either.

therefore, the first bold is not "evidence" at all.

what the first bold IS, is a background statement that creates a contrast intensifying the effect of the actual evidence.
it is not itself a piece of evidence; rather, it highlights the rhetorical value of the statement that actually IS direct evidence (i.e., people now get tons of emails a day).

also, the second statement is clearly and obviously the conclusion of the passage. this is yet another reason to object to this problem; on official boldface questions, it is extremely rare for such an obvious conclusion to be one of the boldface statements.

nervesofsteel wrote:Something must be done to stop spam.-- can this statement be treated as a conclusion...

yeah, that's pretty bad, too. this statement is almost identical to the actual conclusion, except for that the true conclusion substitutes specifics (i.e., legislation) for the vague hand-waving term "something".

the real gmat won't do that - i.e., it won't start a passage with a catchy sound bite ("We have to do something!!") that is for all practical purposes identical to a statement that occurs later in the passage.
in fact, gmat CR passages are almost never redundant, at all, in any way.