Spam – The Internet’s First Four Letter Word

Spam – The Internet's First Four Letter Word

Spam can simply be defined as flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message in hope that the spasm message will get forced onto people. This is the Internet’s version of junk mail that many of us receive in the post. However the amount of bulk mail that many of us, if not all of us, are receiving everyday largely outweighs the amount of junk mail that is arriving through our doors everyday.

Bulk mail is sent to numerous email addresses, targeting people with products that most of us aren’t interested in and haven’t asked to receive. The content of these emails usually revolve round the same subjects, these subjects being online gambling, pharmaceuticals, such as weight loss remedies and explicit adult content. These unwanted emails are clogging up our inboxes and costing people, mainly businesses millions of pounds every year. They are wasting valuable productive working hours; It is estimated an average five million hours are wasted through sorting out emails.

As many of you are most likely aware of the term spam originates from the Monty Python sketch in which everything that appears on this menu contains spam. Ironically many of the first computer hackers and first users of the Internet were apparently Monty Python fans who would post an entire thread on a forum based on the word spam. This is how posting large numbers of the same message became known as spam.

These emails can be produced and sent from a number of sources such as one single Internet user could send out hundreds of messages a day. Businesses are another culprit of sending bulk mail. When businesses send out these malicious messages their sole purpose is to promote a product or service that their business offers. They do this by sending out spam emails as well as posting spam messages on forums and chat rooms. Spammer’s will send this bulk mail to all the possible places that they can across the Internet. However the main source of the mail that we receive will come from a business whose sole purpose is to send out millions of spam messages on behalf of paying customers. These spam messages will be linking you to and promoting websites that often contain explicit content or are online gambling sites as well as pharmaceutical sites that are most likely trying to get you to buy weight loss supplements.

It is highly important in order to reduce the amount of spam that you receive that you do not reply to these spam emails or attempt to purchase anything from these spam sites. If you engage in contact with a spammer all it will do is prove that your email account is being used and will leave you open to receiving even more spam emails. You should try and delete these spam messages without actually opening them. Although this won’t do anything about the messages that you are currently receiving it will stop even more spammer’s sending you mail.

Source by Helen Cox

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