What is spam?
Explanation :: Detection :: Solution :: Prevention Unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE) or Unsolicited Bulk E-mail (UBE) is generally known as spam (instant messaging spam has become known as spim). Spam is junk e-mail, sent indiscriminately for the purpose of selling goods or services (often of a dubious nature) and can also include phishing attempts and virus infections.
Spam is unsolicited e-mail (or news postings) pushing a point. Be it an ad for a used PC, or an urge to vote on a proposition; if you didn’t ask for it, didn’t sign up on a mailing list related to it, and didn’t leave your e-mail address on a web form asking for more information on it, it’s spam! And if it’s in your mailbox, the sender might be liable for a $500 fine per instance. Some of those laws have been up held in court. See the resources at the end of this article.
All Internet users should by now know about spam. The word spam as applied to email means Unsolicited Bulk Email. Unsolicited means that the recipient has not granted verifiable permission for the message to be sent. Bulk means that the message is sent as part of a larger collection of messages, all having substantially identical content. Usually, a message is spam if it is both Unsolicited and Bulk. Unsolicited email is usually normal email (examples include first contact inquiries, job inquiries, and sales inquiries). Bulk email is usually normal email (examples include subscriber newsletters, discussion lists, information lists, and update announcements).
Spam is any kind of unwanted online communication. The most common form of spam is unwanted e-mail. You can also get text message spam, instant message spam (sometimes known as spim), and social networking spam. Some spam is annoying but harmless. However, some spam is part of an identity theft scam or another kind of fraud. Identity theft spam is often called a phishing scam. To protect yourself against e-mail spam, use e-mail software with built-in spam filtering. For more information, see Help keep spam out of your inbox.
A. Spam is a term that is ambiguous. Most people take it to mean any post of a commercial nature however the official definition is any excessive multiple post or excessive crosspost. Post that are deemed to be “spam” after careful determination by the group will be reported to the offenders ISP or NSP.
