What is spam?
Unsolicited email earned the name “spam” because it resembled a Monty Python skit where a chorus of Vikings drowned out other sounds by singing “spam, spam, spam.” * Early digital marketing pioneers contend that spam is actually an acronym for Simultaneously Posted Advertising Message. The first spam email may have been sent in 1978 by a Digital Equipment Corporation salesperson to announce a product presentation. Source: The New York Times, February 9, 2003. ** * Internal Yahoo! data based on 28,000 Yahoo! Mail survey respondents, August 2003 ** Harris Interactive Survey, September 2003 (source http://antispam.yahoo.
Also known as Unsolicited Commercial or Bulk Email (UCE or UBE), spam is a word adopted by the Internet community to describe mass-message postings via email, which can take the form of announcements or advertisements. If you didn’t ask for it, didn’t sign up on a mailing list related to it or didn’t leave your email address on a web form asking for more information about it, it’s probably spam. This method of advertising costs the sender very little yet consumes time and resources for both Internet Service Providers and their customers. It has been estimated that last year spam potentially cost American companies $8.9 billion in lost productivity, bandwidth consumption, technical support and other technical resources [Ferris Research, 2003].
There are many different opinions, but an accepted definition at Sonic.net is: Unwanted, unsolicited mass distributed messages. Spam is unsolicited email, “junk mail,” typically commercial in nature, sent indiscriminately to as wide a target audience as possible. It is a great source of aggravation, lost time, and increased expense on the Internet. The proliferation of spam has a negative impact on the Internet as a whole, on Internet service providers, and on the end user. Sonic.net is committed to fighting the flow of spam. Currently we handle approximately 1.4 million email messages a day, and of those 1.4 million, about 900,000 are blocked as spam! Sonic.net employs multiple strategies for reducing the flow of spam. While there is unfortunately no way to block every single spam, the tools and techniques listed below do dramatically reduce its quantity and make it much easier for our users to manage.
E-mail spam is equivalent to junk mail. It is e-mail that is widely distributed, unsolicited, and usually contains advertising. You didn’t ask for it and probably do not want it. It includes: chain letters, pyramid schemes, requests for financial support, and invitations to visit adult web sites. It is essentially free advertising for the spammer; the cost in human and technical resources is borne by the recipient. This and post-anthrax problems with surface mail have led to a huge increase in spam.
Spam (all lowercase letters – not to be confused with SPAM, the Hormel canned meat product) is any message that is posted an unacceptable number of times to one or more groups or Email lists. The term has incorrectly become associated with any unwanted Email such as ads. The appropriate term for unwanted ads is Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE).
