Understanding Spam

What is spam?

Large numbers of unsolicited, unwanted, intrusive, irrelevant or inappropriate commercial messages sent via email or instant messenger is called spam.

Spam is basically the same message sent repeatedly to a user. Generally, spam on the Internet is used for commercial advertising. It is a cheap but unreliable way to reach consumers. Spam advertisers incur no real costs to send out emails to users, beyond accessing, managing and updating email lists. It is also very difficult to hold spammers accountable for their mass mailings.

Most spam on the Internet advertises prescription drugs, dubious services and products (e.g. penis enhancement), legal services, pornography, unlicensed computer software, get-rich-quick schemes, dubious educational courses, etc.

Spam is widely hated by the Internet community. Several countries have introduced legislation to combat the increasing volume of spam.

Why is spam a problem?

Spam is a major nuisance for Internet users. The moment a user’s email id is located by a spammer, the user is vulnerable to spam. It is estimated that as many as 6 out of 10 emails arriving into an inbox are spam. It is a major nuisance for users to constantly have to clean out their mailboxes.

Furthermore, the large volumes of spam traffic across the Internet consume large quantities of bandwidth. A large amount of spam arriving at one destination is also likely to crash the system and result in the loss of legitimate messages, causing a major inconvenience to users. This is called ‘denial of service’.

Types of spam
Email spam
Email spammers send hundreds of nearly identical messages to a particular email address.

Email addresses are usually obtained from databases, random email generators, web pages, recipients from Usenet postings, and by sheer guesswork. Email spammers often use fraudulent methods to disguise their identity – false names and accounts, false credit card information, constant switching of email addresses, etc. Most email spammers conceal the origin of their messages by spoofing email addresses or even spoofing IP addresses. The spammer can thus make the message appear from almost any email address.

Spammers often use virus-infected networks and computers to send their spam. After gaining access to the system, the spammer loads a Trojan virus or a Bot on the system, which automatically generates and sends spam to everybody on the user’s address book.

The amount of email spam is estimated at 55 billion per day, as of June 2006.

How to protect your computer from email spam:

• Set up email filters on your computer.

• Report spammers to your ISP or your email provider. They can then block these addresses.

• Give out your email address to only trusted people. If you need to subscribe to online services with your email address, create an alternative address for this purpose.

• Install reliable anti-virus and anti-spyware software on your computer and update them regularly. These will prevent spammers from hijacking your PC.

• Do a periodic Internet search for your email address, and ask the specific webmaster to remove it from their web site.

Messaging spam

Messaging spam is a type of spam targeted at instant messaging (IM) services like MSN Messenger, AIM, ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, etc. It is also called SPIM.

Messaging spam works through the IM user directories offered by most messenger services. These directories contain information like user id’s and demographic information like age and sex. Spammers can easily gather this information, subscribe to the service, and send out spam messages.

How to protect yourself from messenger spam:

• Use the privacy option on your messenger service. It will allow you to receive messages only from people on your contact list.

• Block senders who send you spam.

To find more out about getting help with your spam problems check out these companies below.

Cloudmark
McAfee
Spam Bully
Spam Shield