What Is Spam?

Date First Published: 30th May 2023

Topic: Cybersecurity

Subtopic: Threats To Systems, Data & Information

Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty Level: 2/10

Learn more about what spam is in this article.

Spam is a form of unsolicited and unwanted online communication sent to an individual or a large number of individuals that can be distributed through email messages, instant messaging sessions, internet forums, text messages, social media posts, and phone calls. Spam is often sent for advertising, marketing, and phishing purposes.

Is Spam A Security Risk?

In most cases, spam is just an annoyance in that it clutters inboxes and forums, taking the main focus off any important messages, especially if they are not detected as spam and moved to the junk folder or automatically deleted. Unsolicited spam messages often persuade someone to buy a product or a service and may not be fraudulent. However, some types of spam messages can be a security risk in that they contain links to malicious websites and try to spread viruses and malware to steal sensitive information or money from victims.

Popularity

Over the years, electronic spamming is becoming more and more common in that it does not cost spammers anything to distribute the messages in bulk other than the costs of mail servers, domain names, and IP ranges. Since spammers know that most people open all of their messages and texts, it is becoming a common tactic to persuade people to buy something. All that spammers need to do to make money is a small response rate.

How Do Spammers Find Email Addresses To Send Spam Messages To?

The simplest way that spammers find email addresses to send spam messages to is by manually searching the internet for email addresses. Email addresses can be found on almost any website. However, spammers often use automated bots to send their spam messages to a large number of people at once. These are known as spambots. Using spambots can allow thousands of spam messages to be automatically sent per minute.

They work by crawling the internet and capturing email addresses by detecting the '@' symbol. Once an email address has been captured by the spambot and added to the spam mail list, it will regularly send spam emails. In order to make it harder to block the sender, some spambots use fake email addresses that vary with every message, so users might find that spam email messages continue even after blocking the sender.

Prevention

Spam can be prevented by using spam filters to filter unsolicited messages and posts. Spam filters work by analysing the content of a message to detect spam. They may analyse it for certain words, phrases, and links. If it contains any of those specific words, phrases, or links, it will be automatically moved to the junk folder or blocked from posting. For more information on how to avoid receiving spam emails, see this article.

If an email address or IP address is continuously sending spam, the email provider may add it to a blacklist, preventing any emails from that email address or IP address from being delivered. People that continuously spam on social media, forums, or chatrooms may have their accounts or IP addresses blocked.

Where Does The Term "Spam" Come From?

The term 'spam' comes from the 1970 "Spam" sketch of the BBC sketch comedy television series Monty Python's Flying Circus and the Hormel canned meat product. In the sketch, the word is said over 130 times in 3.5 minutes and every item except one includes the Spam canned meat.

In the 1980s, the term was used to describe certain abusive users who frequently used BBSs and MUDs and would repeat "Spam" a huge number of times to scroll other user's messages off the screen.

Later, the term 'spam' was used to indicate excessive repeated posting. As Spam did in the Monty Python sketch, the unwanted message would show up in nearly all newsgroups. Joel Furr was one of the first individuals to use the term "spam" in this context. It had also become a common practice to "spam" Usenet, which involved flooding newsgroups with unwanted messages. After unsolicited commercial messages sent in bulk started being posted to newsgroups and arriving in inboxes, the term 'spam' started to be applied to internet use as well.

Should The Term "Spam" Be Capitalised?

No, the term 'spam' is not an acronym or a proper noun. Unless it appears at the beginning of a sentence, it doesn't need to be capitalised. In addition, it shouldn't be in capital letters unless you are specifically referring to the trademark of Hormel Foods.

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