If you have an email address you probably already know what spam is. Essentially spam is the junk mail of the electronic world, and just as if not more annoying.
While the meat of each spam message is different, offering deals from everything from dating sites to pornography to prescription drugs, their goal is to sell you something. Spam is sent out by some type of automatic mailer program, sending the same message to you and millions of other email users.
Most people find spam so annoying because of the sheer volume. Most people end up with hundreds of junk emails a week, sometimes a day. If your email program doesn't separate or filter out spam, it can take hours to sift through all the garbage and find the emails you're actually interested in.
While spam is a major annoyance, it can lead to other more serious problems as well. Some spam is used as a method of spreading internet security threats such as viruses and other malware.
Spam got its beginnings on USENET, which are newsgroups for various topics of discussion. Spam was being sent to multiple groups via cross-posting. Soon spammers were sending advertisements to thousands of different newsgroups, regardless of their potential interest.
As soon as email became a popular form of communication spammers found an easy way to get their information to literally millions of people with the use of spambots. Spambots are programs which can gather email addresses from a variety of sources such as newsgroups or websites. Once they have collected your email address you're added to a list and the spamming begins.
If you're annoyed by spam and don't bother reading it you may be wondering how they can make a profit at all. Since sending spam is extremely inexpensive, even if just an extremely small portion of the recipients click on the advertisement and buy whatever is being sold, it is well worth it.
Spam has increasingly become a huge problem and there are many approaches to try and make spam a thing of the past. In several countries all spam email must offer an option to opt out of receiving emails, giving you some control in the number of emails you receive.
About the Author
Find out how to protect yourself and your computer from all these threats on the Internet Security Guide website. Visit http://www.internetsecurityguide.org for more information and to receive your free copy of our special report "How To Lock Down Your Computer - A Guide To Internet Security"
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