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E-mail spam is a subset of spam that involves sending nearly identical messages to numerous recipients by e-mail.
Spam is e-mail that is both unsolicited by the recipient and sent in substantively identical form to many recipients. Thus, a common synonym for spam is unsolicited bulk e-mail (UBE). Some definitions of spam specifically include the aspects of email that is unsolicited and sent in bulk.
As the recipient directly bears the cost of delivery, storage, and processing, one could regard spam as the electronic equivalent of "postage-due" junk mail. However, this does not mean that all commercial email is spam; for example, some recipients may have opted in (i.e., willingly chosen) to receive the marketer's email.
Spam is sent by organizations of varying sizes and motivations. Some are large, well-known companies; spam from these sources is sometimes called mainsleaze. A widely-known instance of spamming by a large corporation was Kraft Foods' marketing of its Gevalia coffee brand. Advance fee fraud spam such as the Nigerian "419" scam may be sent by a single individual from a cyber cafe in a developing country. Organized "spam gangs" operating from Russia or eastern Europe share many features in common with other forms of organized crime, including turf battles and revenge killings.
Spammers may engage in deliberate fraud to send out their messages. Spammers often use false names, addresses, phone numbers, and other contact information to set up "disposable" accounts at various Internet service providers. They also often use falsified or stolen credit card numbers to pay for these accounts. This allows them to move quickly from one account to the next as the host ISPs discover and shut down each one.
Spam is often used to collect personal information bought by other companies, allowing them to access your information typed in the "spam".
Senders may go to great lengths to conceal the origin of their messages. Large companies may hire another firm to send their messages so that complaints or blocking of email falls on a third party. Others engage in spoofing of e-mail addresses (much easier than IP address spoofing). The e-mail protocol (SMTP) has no authentication by default, so the spammer can pretend to relay a message apparently from any e-mail address. To prevent this, some ISPs and domains require the use of SMTP-AUTH, allowing positive identification of the specific account from which an e-mail originates. Senders cannot completely spoof e-mail delivery chains (the 'Received' header), since the receiving mailserver records the actual connection from the last mailserver's IP address. To counter this, some spammers forge additional delivery headers to make it appear as if the e-mail had previously traversed many legitimate servers.
Spammers frequently seek out and make use of vulnerable third-party systems such as open mail relays and open proxy servers. The SMTP system, used to send e-mail across the Internet, forwards mail from one server to another; mail servers that ISPs run commonly require some form of authentication that the user is a customer of that ISP. Open relays, however, do not properly check who is using the mail server and pass all mail to the destination address, making it quite a bit harder to track down spammers.
Increasingly, spammers use networks of virus-infected PCs (zombies) to send their spam. Zombie networks are also known as Botnets. In June 2006, an estimated 80% of e-mail spam were sent by zombie PCs, an increase of 30% from the prior year. An estimated 55 billion e-mail spam were sent each day in June 2006, an increase of 25 billion per day from June 2005.
Spoofing can have serious consequences for legitimate e-mail users. Not only can their e-mail inboxes get clogged up with "undeliverable" e-mails in addition to volumes of spam, they can mistakenly be identified as a spammer. Not only may they receive irate e-mail from spam victims, but (if spam victims report the e-mail address owner to the ISP, for example) their ISP may terminate their service for spamming.
We need articles on the most popular topics.
1. Spam basics:
fight spam | spam black list | spam definition | spam firewall | spam guard | spam killer | spam list
2. Types of Spam:
email spam | archive spam | comment spam | blog spam | referrer log spam
3. More on Email Spam:
anti spam email | anti spam exchange both client and server | anti spam filters | outlook express spam filter/blocker
4. Software:
anti spam program and software downloads such as Microsoft Antispam and Norton Antispam, spam assassin, yahoo spam blocker
5. Legislation:
can spam act | legislation to fight spam
6. Filters and Blockers:
free spam blockers | email spam blocker | email spam filter
7. Report Spammers:
report spam | reporting spam | false positive spam
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