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EMAIL AND SPAM. ITEC 317 AVA BOLOURI 099165. SPAMS. What is spam?.
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EMAIL AND SPAM ITEC 317 AVA BOLOURI 099165
What is spam? • Spam is flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it. Most spam is commercial advertising, often for dubious products, get-rich-quick schemes, or quasi-legal services. Spam costs the sender very little to send -- most of the costs are paid for by the recipient or the carriers rather than by the sender.
What is spam? • There are two main types of spam, and they have different effects on Internet users. Cancellable Usenet spam is a single message sent to 20 or more Usenet newsgroups.Usenet spam robs users of the utility of the newsgroups by overwhelming them with a barrage of advertising or other irrelevant posts.
What is spam? • Email spam targets individual users with direct mail messages. Email spam lists are often created by scanning Usenet postings, stealing Internet mailing lists, or searching the Web for addresses. Email spams typically cost users money out-of-pocket to receive. Many people - anyone with measured phone service - read or receive their mail while the meter is running, so to speak. Spam costs them additional money. On top of that, it costs money for ISPs and online services to transmit spam, and these costs are transmitted directly to subscribers.
Why is it Called Spam? • There is some debate about the source of the term, but the generally accepted version is that it comes from the Monty Python song, "Spam spamspamspam, spam spamspamspam, lovely spam, wonderful spam". Like the song, spam is an endless repetition of worthless text. Another school of thought maintains that it comes from the computer group lab at the University of Southern California who gave it the name because it has many of the same characteristics as the lunch meat Spam.
Spam history • Every Internet user knows the word ‘spam’ and sees it in their inbox quite often. But not everyone knows that years ago the word ‘spam’ had nothing to do with either the Internet or emails. • ‘Spam’ is an acronym derived from the words ‘spiced’ and ‘ham’. • In 1937, the Hormel Foods Corporation (USA) started selling minced sausage made from out-of-date meat. The Americans refused to buy this unappetizing product. To avoid financial losses the owner of the company, Mr. Hormel, launched a massive advertizing campaign which resulted in a contract to provide tinned meat products to the Army and Navy. • In 1937, Hormel Foods began to supply its products to American and allied troops. After World War 2, with Britain in the grips of an economic crisis, spam was one of the few meat products that wasn’t rationed and hence was widely available. George Orwell, in his book ‘1984’, described spam as ‘pink meat pieces’, which gave a new meaning to the word ‘spam’ - something disgusting but inevitable. • In December 1970 the BBC television comedy series Monty Python’s Flying Circus showed a sketch set in a cafe where nearly every item on the menu included spam - the tinned meat product. As the waiter recited the SPAM-filled menu, a chorus of Viking patrons drowned out all other conversation with a song repeating "SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM... lovely SPAM, wonderful SPAM", hence "SPAMming" the dialogue. Since then spam has been associated with unwanted, obtrusive, excessive information which suppresses required messages. • In 1993 the term ‘spam’ was first introduced with reference to unsolicited or undesired bulk electronic messages. Richard Dephew, administrator of the world-wide distributed Internet discussion system Usenet, wrote a program which mistakenly caused the release of dozens of recursive messages onto the news.admin.policy newsgroup. The recipients immediately found an appropriate name for these obtrusive messages – spam. • On April 12 1994, a husband-and-wife firm of lawyers, Canter & Siegel, posted the first massive spam mailing. The company’s programmer employed Usenet to advertise the services offered by Canter & Siegel, thus giving a start to commercial spam. • Today the word ‘spam’ is widely used in email terminology, though Hormel tinned meat products are still on sale in the USA.
Email spam • spam email is any email that was not requested by a user but was sent to that user and many others, typically (but not always) with malicious intent. The source and identity of the sender is anonymous and there is no option to cease receiving future emails.
Email spam • Email spam, also known as junk email or unsolicited bulk email (UBE), is a subset of electronic spam involving nearly identical messages sent to numerous recipients by email. Clicking on links in spam email may send users to phishing web sites or sites that are hosting malware • Spam email may also include malware as scripts or other executable file attachments. Definitions of spam usually include the aspects that email is unsolicited and sent in bulk.
The Definition of Email Spam • By definition, email spam is any email that meets the following three criteria: • According to Kaspersky Lab, the definition of spam is anonymous, unsolicited bulk email. • Anonymous: real spam is sent with spoofed or harvested sender addresses to conceal the actual sender. • Mass mailing: real spam is sent in enormous quantities. Spammers make money from the small percentage of recipients that actually respond, so for spam to be cost-effective, the initial mails have to be high-volume
The Definition of Email Spam • Unsolicited: mailing lists, newsletters and other advertising materials that end users have opted to receive may resemble spam, but are actually legitimate mail. In other words, the same piece of mail can be classed as both spam and legitimate mail depending on whether or not the user elected to receive it.
Most common products advertised • According to information compiled by Commtouch Software Ltd., email spam for the first quarter of 2010 can be broken down as follows. • EMail Spam by Topic • Pharmacy 81% • Replica 5.40% • Enhancers 2.30% • Phishing 2.30% • Degrees 1.30% • Casino 1% • Weight Loss 0.40% • Other 6.30%
Why Does Anybody Actually Send Spam Emails? • Chances are that most of us reading this email can easily identify a spam message in our inbox and ignore it. However, not everybody is as experienced in the methods of marketing and the risks associated with spam. There are individuals in the world who will respond to spam messages, giving the malicious spammers who sent them exactly the risky financial or personal information that those spammers want. The result can be profit for the spammers and even financial loss for the recipients.
Why Does Anybody Actually Send Spam Emails? • keep in mind that one of the great email marketing benefits is that the cost in money and time to send spam emails is quite low. Whether the spam email sender is using his or her own email server or renting a low-cost, offshore proxy server, the cost of sending huge numbers of spam emails is almost always going to be lower than the return. In most cases, it will only take one individual responding to a spam email send to make the entire send worth it to the malicious spammer.
How do spammers harvest email addresses ? • There are many ways in which spammers can get your email address: • From posts to UseNet with your email address. • From mailing lists. • From web pages. • From various web and paper forms. • Using social engineering. • From a web browser. • From IRC and chat rooms • From white & yellow pages. • By having access to the same computer.
How to Stop Spam • Look for warning signs. • Stop posting your e-mail address on a public forum or website. • Avoid certain sites and software programs. • Use spam blocking tools. • Report spam. • Use disposable addresses to identify and shake off sources of spam. • Avoid clicking links within Wiki essays.
