What is Spam?

Most people realize that spam is the receipt of unwanted email, but what many don't know is that spam can come in various other forms as well. It can come through newsgroups, search engines, blogs and guestbooks, cell phones, and even instant messenger services. All types of spam serve a purpose, and all can be extremely disruptive, annoying, and malicious.

The reason spammers use the tactics they use is because it works for them financially. The only costs they incur are the ones associated with maintaining their mailing lists and maintaining an internet connection. Spammers run rampant for the most part, as noted by how many spam emails a person can expect to receive on any given day. I know that personally, a day doesn't go by where I haven't received at least 20 unwanted messages in some form or another. Nobody enjoys spam (except maybe the spammers themselves), and many countries have passed laws and regulations trying to curb it.

When it comes to the spamming of discussion forums, a spammer will join (or post as a guest, if the forum supports it) and bump really old threads or otherwise post in an off-topic manner in order to either disrupt the flow of conversation taking place there, or to advertise something. Many will utilize the forums signature feature to put a link to whatever they're selling, which is then attached to every post they make.

Obviously, spam and SPAM are two different things. The lowercase spam refers to the junk email and junk messages that have been plaguing the internet pretty much since the beginning. SPAM in uppercase refers to the Hormel food product, which by the way, is the state food of Hawaii. Hormel has made it clear that they do not have an issue with their trademarked SPAM being used to describe the epidemic of unsolicited messages, but they have stated that they would prefer that people refer to it using lowercase letters, so as to not infringe on their trademark. There have, however, been situations where Hormel has asked companies to not use the word spam, as in the case of SpamArrest and spambuster.

Spam Videos

Spam Headlines

The top 10 'most wanted' spam-spewing botnets

Spam continues to grow largely due to the growth in malicious botnets. Many botnets are command-and-control systems used by criminals and are still the main way that spam is spewed into your e-mail box.

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Spammers Moving to Disposable Domains

Spammers and the botnet operators they're allied with are continuing to adapt their techniques to evade security technologies, and now are using what amount to disposable domains for their activities.

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Microsoft sues spammers for abusing Hotmail anti-spam filters

The suit, Microsoft Corporation v. Boris Mizhen, et al., claims that the defendants created millions of Hotmail accounts and used them to falsely label up to 200,000 spam messages a day as legitimate mail.

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Porn on Twitter? Think of the seniors!

No one here on Al Gore's Great Green Internet is truly shocked or surprised that Twitter is going through the exact same growing pains experienced by every single social network that ever existed.

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Gmail's Spam Filter No Longer Effective?

Yahoo has recently quoted a study of the Fraunhofer Institute which concluded that Yahoo Mail and Hotmail have better spam filters than Gmail.

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