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.

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.

In other words:

Spam is anonymous, unsolicited bulk email.

This is the description that is being used today in the USA and Europe as a basis for the creation of anti-spam legislation. Let's take a closer look at each component of the definition:

• Anonymous: real spam is sent with spoofed or harvested sender addresses to conceal the actual sender.
• Mass mailing: real spam is sent in mass 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.
• 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.

It should be highlighted that the words 'advertising' and 'commercial' are not used to define spam.

Many spam messages are neither advertising nor any type of commercial proposition. In additon to offering goods and services, spam mailings can fall into the following categories:

• Political messages
• Quasi-charity appeals
• Financial scams
• Chain letters
• Fake spam being used to spread malware

Evolution of Spam

Spam (unsolicited bulk advertising via email) made its first appearance in the mid 1990s, i.e. as soon as enough people were using email to make this a cost-effective form of advertising. By 1997, spam was regarded as being a problem, and the first Real-Time Black List (RBL) appeared in the same year.
Spammer techniques have evolved in response to the appearance of more and better filters. As soon as security firms develop effective filters, spammers change their tactics to avoid the new spam blockers. And this leads to a vicious circle, with spammers re-investing profits into developing new techniques to evade new spam filters. The situation is spiralling out of control.

Unsoliticited but legitimate messages

A legitimate commercial proposition, a charity appeal, an invitation addressed personally to an existing recipient or a newsletter can certainly be defined as unsolicited mail, but not as spam. Legitimate messages may also include delivery failure messages, misdirected messages, messages from system administrators or even messages from old friends who have previously not corresponded with the recipient by email. Unsolicited - yes. Unwanted - not necessarily.

How to deal with spam

Because unsolicited correspondence may be of interest to the recipient, a quality antispam solution should be able to distinguish between true spam (unsolicited, bulk mailing) and unsolicited correspondence. This kind of mail should be flagged as 'possible spam' so it can be reviewed or deleted at the recipient's convenience.

Companies should have a spam policy, with system administrators assessing the needs of different departments. Access to different unsolicited mail folders should be given to different user groups based on this assessment. For instance, the travel manager may well want to read travel ads, whereas the HR department may wish to see all invitations to seminars and training sessions.

Ten Ways to Avoid Spam

• Maintain at least two email addresses. You should use your private address only for personal correspondence. The public address should be the one you use to register on public forums, in chat rooms, to subscribe to mailing lists etc.

• Your private address should be difficult to spoof. Spammers use combinations of obvious names, words and numbers to build possible addresses. Your private address should not simply be your first and last name. Be creative and personalize your email address.

• Never publish your private address on publicly accessible resources.

• Treat your public address as a temporary one. Chances are high that spammers will harvest your public address fairly quickly. Don't be afraid to change it often.

• If you have to publish your private address electronically, mask it to avoid having it harvested by spammers.  If you need to publish your private address on a web-site, do this as a graphics file rather than as a link.

• Always use your public address to register in forums, chat rooms and to subscribe to mailing lists and promotions. You might even consider using a number of public addresses in order to trace which services are selling addresses to spammers.

• Do not click on unsubscribe links from questionable sources. Spammers send fake unsubscribe letters in an attempt to collect active addresses. You certainly don't want to have your address tagged as active, do you? It will just increase the amount of spam you receive.

• Never respond to spam. Most spammers verify receipt and log responses. The more you respond, the more spam you will receive.

• Make sure that your mail is filtered by an antispam solution. Consider installing a personal antispam solution. Only open email accounts with providers who offer spam filtration prior to mail delivery.

• If your private address is discovered by spammers - change it. This can be inconvenient, but changing your email address does help you avoid spam - at least for a while!

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