5 what is spam. What is email spam and why fight it. The concept of spam and its main features

Spam is something every network user is familiar with.

In the most common sense, spam is the mass sending of advertising emails to users who have not given their consent.

Nowadays spam has many more meanings and variations: SMS spam, spam on social networks, and so on. But let's start with the origin of the word itself.

Term

The word “spam” itself, or rather the English version “spam”, has a rather funny origin. SPAM was originally a trademark of an American company; Under this brand, canned meat began to be produced in 1936, of which so much was produced during the Second World War that an urgent advertising campaign had to be carried out - it was necessary to sell them before the expiration date. These canned foods were advertised everywhere, and were also advertised on the radio.

This situation was played out in one of the episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus, and the word SPAM acquired its current meaning in 1986, when many identical messages from financial pyramid advertisements appeared.

Currently, the amount of spam varies from year to year. For example, in 2017, the share of spam in total email traffic was slightly more than half, 56.63%; Moreover, the largest amount of spam (more than 13%) came from the United States.

Types of spam

Bulk mailing- the most famous type of spam. Spammers buy databases of email addresses and then send emails with commercial offers (which most often contain viruses, phishing, and so on).
Messages on social networks and instant messengers. Previously, these were the same advertising messages as in letters, but now a scheme is becoming popular when a user’s account is hacked, and then messages are sent on his behalf asking him to transfer a certain amount of money.
Spam on forums. Spammers are also active on forums: they leave messages in discussions and send private messages to users. Sometimes this is used to build up the link mass of a site.
Spam in comments on the site. The type of spam that website owners hate the most. The goal of spammers is still the same - either to advertise their goods or services, or to increase subject citation index(tIC).
Spam in catalogs and message boards. Directories are used to promote websites (although less so now), and message boards are used for fraudulent advertisements.
Spam via SMS. As with sending letters, spammers buy databases of mobile operator users and send spam messages of an advertising or fraudulent nature.

Safe and dangerous spam

Spam messages can be divided into two large groups - safe and dangerous. The first ones are unpleasant, but they only threaten to ruin your mood and waste time, but the second ones can harm your computer and finances.

Safe spam

Advertising of legal goods or services. These are ordinary letters of an advertising nature, with the difference that users did not give their permission to receive them.
Advertising of goods or services prohibited by law. If the law prohibits advertising a product or service, then spammers begin to actively use mailings; they have nothing to lose.
Compromising letters. May be related to politics; are sent with the aim of discrediting competitors, and can also be sent supposedly on behalf of competitors in order to change opinions about them for the worse.
"Letters of happiness." Messages (including in instant messengers) with a request to forward a text to other users so that something good happens or something bad doesn’t happen. Sometimes such letters are used by spammers to collect a database of addresses for subsequent mailings.

Dangerous spam

In general, spam is far from a harmless thing, so any messages that look like spam should be treated very carefully.

How to deal with email spam

In order to reduce the amount of spam in your mail as much as possible, you need to start by understandinghow users get on mailing lists.

Inattention when registering on the site. Often, in the registration form there is already a checkbox indicating consent to receive advertising materials. However, in this case it is not difficult to refuse spam: at the end of each letter there should be an “Unsubscribe” link.
Breaking. Fraudsters hack websites and user emails and gain access to databases (contacts).
Sale. Address databases, unfortunately, are sometimes sold by website employees themselves.
Phishing. The user enters his data on fake sites.

What to do?

The main advice that has repeatedly shown its effectiveness:

register at least two email addresses. One for personal and work contacts, and the second for registration on commercial sites, sites with dubious content, and so on.

The next tip is to choose a reliable email service (for example, Gmail ). In such email services, spam filtering works well, so most of the fraudulent emails will go straight to the Spam folder.

If some letter nevertheless “breaks through” into the main letter folder, be sure to mark it as spam - all further letters from this user will end up there.

You can also use filters and create rules to get rid of spam (for example, in Yandex mail).

Conclusion

Spam is a serious problem - mainly due to the dangerous links and files that can be found inside the email, spam is a serious problem, especially for unsophisticated users. Therefore, even if you are sure that you will never fall for scammers, be sure to tell your family and friends about the dangers.

Every Internet user knows the word “spam” today. Moreover, he not only knows, but also often sees it in his email inbox. But not everyone knows that the word “spam” itself was once in no way associated with either the Internet or emails.

Spam is an acronym, a compound word. It was formed from the truncated “spiced ham” - “ham with spices”, “sausage with pepper”, “pepper ham”. Therefore, a direct translation of the English “spam” can be considered something like “spetchina” - “spices” plus “ham”.

The history of this “ham” is as follows: in 1937, the American company Hormel Foods produced minced sausage from the “illiquid” third-fresh meat that had accumulated at the factory. Americans did not buy the unappetizing product, so the owner of the corporation, Mr. Hormel, launched a large-scale marketing campaign, widely advertised his product and began supplying his canned food to the military departments and the navy.

In 1937, Hormel Foods fed American and Allied troops with its products. Even in post-war England, amidst the economic crisis, spam was a staple food for the British. The “pink pieces of meat” described by Orwell in 1984 were the spam of 1948. So the word acquired the meaning of something disgusting, but inevitable.

In December 1970, in the 25th episode of the theater group's sketch Monty Python's Flying Circus, diners find themselves in a restaurant where every dish contains Spam ham. The waitress describes the benefits of spam. A choir dressed as Vikings roars “Spam, spam, spam!” in the background, completely drowning out the conversations of the patrons. Thus, the term “spam” began to be associated with unwanted, annoying, redundant information that “jammes” even useful messages.

The term “spam” in a new meaning (obsessive email, junk mail) appeared in 1993.

The term “spam” in a new meaning (obsessive email, junk mail) appeared in 1993. Usenet computer network administrator Richard Depew wrote a program whose error on March 31, 1993 caused two hundred identical messages to be sent to one of the conferences. His dissatisfied interlocutors quickly found a suitable name for the intrusive messages - “spam”.

One can also note one of the earliest mass “spam mailings”: in April 1994, the law firm Canter & Siegel hired a programmer who wrote a simple program and advertised the office’s dubious services on the entire conference of the same Usenet network.

Today, the term “spam” (as well as its various derivatives - “spam”, “spammer”, etc.) has been completely reoriented towards e-mail and has come into widespread use, despite the fact that Hormel sausages with this name are produced in the USA still.

UCE and UBE

Before giving our definition of the term “spam,” we should say a few words about spam in general and how exactly it is understood in other countries.

Spam (unsolicited information by the user), depending on the goals and objectives of the sender (spammer), may contain commercial information or have nothing to do with it. Thus, based on the content of the message, a distinction is made between “commercial” spam - “unsolicited commercial e-mail” (common abbreviation - UCE) and “non-commercial” - “unsolicited bulk e-mail” (UBE).

In the United States, each state's law often defines unsolicited (commercial) mail differently, and each state's legal status for spam has its own nuances. Most state laws limit the sending of unsolicited commercial emails only - UCE (unsolicited commercial email). However, in a number of states (for example, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana) restrictions were introduced for both UCE and UBE, i.e. for bulk sending of any unsolicited electronic messages, regardless of their nature.

From the point of view of organizing the text of an email, spam may contain in the “Subject” field information about what this message is (for example, that it contains advertising information), and in the body of the letter - an indication in connection with which the sender is contacting the recipient without prior consent, as well as information about what actions the recipient must take in order not to receive messages from the sender in the future, i.e., contain information about an email address, an Internet resource or telephone (usually a toll-free phone number), which are intended for unsubscribing (terminating subscription) from unsolicited information (“opt-out” function).

These signs (indication in the Subject field and the presence of an unsubscribe mechanism) indicate that the sender understands that the information he offers is imposed on recipients, and that he is making a good faith attempt to reduce the possible negative impact on them. But very often, the spammer not only does not feel the desire to reduce the discomfort of spam, but also refuses responsibility for his actions by falsifying the sender's address, using a third party's address and falsifying message headers. All this is done in order to make it as difficult as possible to identify the sender and take appropriate measures against him.

Definition of spam

According to Kaspersky Lab's definition, spam is anonymous mass unsolicited mailing.

In this definition, every word included is important.

Anonymous: everyone suffers mainly from automatic mailings with a hidden or falsified return address.

Uninvited: Obviously, subscription mailing lists and conferences should not fall under our definition (although the anonymity condition largely guarantees this).

The definition of spam often includes the words “advertising” or “commercial offer.” This is not entirely true - a significant part of spam does not serve advertising or commercial purposes. There are political spam mailings, there are “charitable” spam letters, there are fraudulent (“Nigerian”, phishing), “chain letters” - letters with a request to forward to friends (horror stories, “chain letters”), viral and others that are not a commercial enterprise.

Thus, we divide all unsolicited proposals that fall into the box into:

spam that has all the signs of anonymous mass mailing,
targeted commercial offers.

The first ones need to be filtered and sometimes immediately deleted - according to company policy. The latter can also be filtered, but they must be handled more carefully.

If you have ever worked with email, you are familiar with such an unpleasant phenomenon as spam - mass mailing of advertising messages carried out without the consent of the recipient. Usually it is carried out not centrally, from one server, but using the so-called spam network, simultaneously from many computers connected to the Internet. Moreover, the owner of such a PC does not necessarily need to know that his workstation is a spam distributor. Many users do not attach much importance to junk mail: just think, an advertising letter has arrived, delete it, and you’re done.

However, not everything is as simple as it seems. Firstly, such emails often contain viruses (usually so-called bots, which include your computer in an existing spam network, which, in turn, can lead to your computer being blacklisted). Secondly, spam mailings generate huge traffic, thus creating a very serious load on network resources. It would seem that the size of one letter is small, but imagine that such messages are sent out in millions of copies, and this seriously slows down the Internet and forces you to pay for extra traffic, especially if your computer is a bot on a spam network. Thirdly, fraudulent letters are often found in spam mailings. Among them, there are two most common types - “Nigerian letters” and phishing. The first is so named because of its wide distribution in Nigeria and other countries of the African continent. Usually in these letters the addressee is asked to help in carrying out a multimillion-dollar operation, for example, receiving an inheritance from a rich uncle, citing various difficulties in his home country. All that is required of you is to give a small bribe to an official or open a bank account and deposit a certain amount into it and similar things. Of course, in any case, the victim will not see the promised money, since it simply does not exist. The name of the second type of fraud - phishing - comes from the English fishing, i.e. “fishing”. Its goal is to lure users into confidential information about bank accounts, credit card numbers, passwords, etc. It works as follows: you receive a letter supposedly from the bank administration asking you to confirm your data in the near future, otherwise your account may be blocked. It also provides the address of a resource where you need to fill out an online form, which, among others, contains fields required by scammers. Its design is often made in the style of your bank’s real website, and the address (domain name) may differ by only one or two letters. So, when receiving such correspondence, you should be extremely careful.

Good day, dear visitor to the blog site. Users who have an email account or a page on social networks know what spam is on the Internet. Sometimes uninteresting and completely unnecessary emails literally “fill up” your inbox and clog it up. Of course, this bothers and angers a person, but for those who send out such “chain letters”, such mailings bring income. After all, such letters often contain dubious offers aimed at scamming you out of money.

But even when faced with such notifications every day, not every user can give a clear answer to the question of what email spam is. In fact, sometimes it can be useful, but in some cases the situation is different. Therefore, we will consider the basic provisions about what letters are considered spam, who spammers are, and how to protect your account from such mailings.

The concept of spam and its main features

Before understanding the meaning of the term, let's find out what the word "spam" means and where it came from. In fact, the history of the origin of this concept is quite interesting and unusual.

People first learned about the word spam in 1936. It was at this time that an American company was created with a trademark called SPAM. Therefore, it would be most correct to say not “spam”, but “spam”, but this is not a fundamental issue.

The company was engaged in the production of canned meat, but during the Second World War they produced so many that they began to spoil. In order not to incur losses, the company began to advertise its products everywhere, on almost every corner. The advertisement was even shown on the radio.

By the way, if you look for a translation of the word SPAM, it will not have anything to do with what this term implies in the modern context. That is, there is no logical explanation why streams of unnecessary correspondence arriving by phone or e-mail are called spam.

However, the term “spam mailing” as such began to be widely used since 1986. It was during this period that all advertising pyramids began to mass produce and send people leaflets that were almost identical to each other. And now the amount of spam on the Internet is increasing every year. This is why users are so interested in protecting their accounts from such unnecessary information.

Let's understand the term

So, what is spam in simple words? If you have not yet figured out the meaning of this word, then the following definition will be useful for you.

In most cases, such mailings apply only to emails - those that arrive by mail, phone, instant messengers or personal messages on social networks. However, spam messages are considered notifications that the user did not sign up to receive. It is for this reason that their appearance is annoying and annoying.

Types of spam and their features

Now you know what spam means and what it is used for. Such mailings have their own varieties, which we will discuss in more detail.

So, today we can distinguish the following types of spam.

Mass mailings

What does mass spam mean? Almost everyone is familiar with this concept, since it is one of the most common types of such notifications.

How it works? Spammers acquire databases where users' email addresses are collected, after which they begin sending letters with a specific content. In addition to advertising information, they may also contain viruses and other unpleasant “bonuses”.

On a note. A spammer is a person who sends such notifications. Can work for a specific company or do freelance work.

Newsletters on social networks

What is spam on VK? Previously, spammers created separate accounts to send advertising or political emails (and more). But in recent years, a less pleasant picture has emerged. Unscrupulous users hack into the accounts of other users and send spam from them. Typically, this is a request to transfer a certain amount of money.

Thus, contact spam is part of a fraudulent scheme, but not everyone can recognize such a dirty trick.

Notifications on forums

Spam is often sent on forums. For example, interested users leave the necessary notifications in comments to discussions, and also write to other people in private messages, adding a link to a particular source of information.

Often, such notifications are created and sent with the aim of attracting more visitors to the site.

SPAM mailing on websites

Some users really like to spam comments on different sites. That is why the owners of such resources have more trouble. The goal of spammers in this case is either to advertise their services or products, or to promote their own projects.

SMS spam

What is a spam message on your phone? The principle of its operation is the same as when sending letters to email boxes. Only spammers in this case buy databases from mobile operators. SMS spam arrives to the client in the form of a regular text or graphic message. The content of such a notice may be completely different.

In this case, we are talking about spam in WhatsApp, Viber and other popular programs that users install on phones, tablets or computers. Since they work based on a phone number or email address, spammers can easily reach the accounts of potential victims.

Search spam

What is considered search spam? Every Internet user is familiar with this type of mailing, even if he himself is not aware of it. Surely, you have encountered such a phenomenon as the appearance in your browser of a list of sites that are not related to your search query. Such resources do not provide any benefit, but they are well promoted and bring good income to their owners through clicks on the link.

In addition to the above varieties, there are 2 more types of spam – harmless and dangerous. The first type includes:

How dangerous is spam for the user?

It all depends on what specific subtype of such mailings the user encountered.

Phishing. This is a fraudulent scheme that is designed to “hook” a person, unsettling him. For example, the user receives a letter via email, instant messenger, or phone number stating that there are problems with your bank or virtual account. As a result, you need to follow the link to authorize on the site. This is where the whole “salt” lies, since the specified site ultimately turns out to be fake. Although it is almost impossible to determine this on your own, since it is like two peas in a pod like the official resource of a bank or electronic payment system. How to identify this type of spam? It is difficult to expose scammers, but it is possible. In order not to fall for the trick, you need to check all incoming messages of similar content by calling the bank, or logging into the electronic payment system through a phone application or a website familiar to the user.
The so-called Nigerian letters. A person receives a letter stating that he can receive a large sum of money, and the pretexts can be very different. To receive funds, the recipient only needs to “pay the small charges” for sending or transferring funds. If the user follows these directions and makes payment, the scammers disappear.
Viruses. Letters that arrive en masse on your phone or email may contain malware. The smallest harm they cause is a computer breakdown. It’s another matter if these viruses “hide” among files and gradually record all the important information - personal data, logins, passwords, etc. And then create a virus and subsequently be able to use this data for their own purposes.

What is flooding?

Note. There is another concept - flood. It involves sending messages of the same type that have large volumes. This is why users cannot always understand the difference between flood and spam.

We've covered the concept of spam, now let's understand what flooding is. It also has a second interpretation - it is an attack on the server by so-called botnets. Moreover, the flow of information and requests is so great that under its influence the server sooner or later stops working. Thus, flooding is much more dangerous than spam.

In a safer context, "flood" implies "nonsense", "nonsense". That is, if someone asks “not to bullshit” in response to another person’s comment, this could mean asking “not to bullshit.”

Now you fully know the meaning of the word spam and know how to recognize its varieties. But the situation should not be considered hopeless. There are several ways to help protect against such mailings, and now we will look at them in detail.

How to get rid of spam?

Many users, knowing what spam in mail means, are wondering how to avoid it. Experts give one useful piece of advice: you need to create 2 e-mail addresses. One of them must be used to save data, conduct business correspondence and perform other important operations. The second box can be used for subscriptions to different channels, sites, communities. These are the addresses that are most often attacked by spammers.

The second tip is to create an email account on reliably protected services - for example, on . There is a specially created folder where such notifications are moved.

What is antispam on the phone? This is a special application that blocks incoming messages from unwanted recipients. It can be downloaded and installed on a mobile device, and then configured as needed. As practice shows, this method of combating spam gives quite good results.

You probably often receive unwanted advertising messages by email, but you don’t pay much attention to them? This article is dedicated to explaining what spam is and the reasons why it needs to be fought.

And so, first of all, let’s answer the question, what is spam?- If in fact, then spam is advertising messages received that you did not consent to. Today, spam is a daily occurrence. Many people don’t even think about the fact that spam is not so harmless.

Spam emails may carry a certain virus, which can harm your computer, and spam creates a lot of traffic that seriously loads the network. Most often, they send out unnecessary advertisements, for example, selling windows, training courses, diet pills, making money on the Internet, etc. Addresses for such mailings are collected automatically, without the consent of the owner of the mailbox, so when you leave your email in an open source, it is better to do it in encrypted form, for example, mymail(dog)mail.ru. However, this method also does not provide a 100% guarantee that your address will not end up on spam mailing lists. How to increase the deliverability of your emails? Read more.

Recently there has been an active fight against spam. Why is this being done?

Firstly, no one wants to receive unnecessary emails in their mail and constantly delete them. Secondly, many such mailings are carried out with the goal of infecting your computer with a virus or obtaining some of your confidential data for further action. Thirdly, spam takes up a lot of valuable time, for example, of employees of large companies, and this only leads to losses.

Is it possible to avoid spam?

As mentioned above, you can encrypt your email addresses in open sources. If you start receiving unnecessary emails in your email, you can use a spam filter. This program is included in email clients and recognizes spam emails based on certain characteristics. The program analyzes the contents of the received letter and compares it with a letter that contains outright spam. The second way is analysis of the IP address from which spam has already been received. True, this method is not particularly effective, since spammers constantly change servers for sending such letters. In the case when the option of placing an email domain on hosting and using your own domain for mailboxes is being considered, then you can consider Another option is to place the protection on the hosting server itself. Many hosters use so-called spam filters on their servers (for example, we use spam-assassin). When properly configured, they are generally quite effective. There are many more ways to detect spam automatically and manually (analyzing the header, rejecting a letter from a non-existent domain, determining the mass distribution), but not one of them yet provides 100% protection against unwanted correspondence.

How to send a newsletter so that it doesn’t end up in spam?

Recipients of emails must be your subscribers or have expressly consented to receive correspondence. The fewer complaints there are against you, the less likely it is that you will be added to the spam list.
Your letter must have a “subscribe from mailing list” function (automatically or manually).
At the beginning of the letter you need to indicate the name or nickname of the user you are contacting.
The newsletter must be sent from the same email addresses and IP addresses.
Indicate the reason why the user received this letter (... because you are subscribed to our news, etc.).
Be sure to use the so-called PTR record for the IP address of the server from which the newsletter is sent.
Systematically check the presence of the IP address of the server from which you send the mail in spam databases (spamhouse, spamcop, etc.). If an address ends up in such databases, it needs to be “retrieved” from there and the problem that caused the IP to be included there must be solved.
If you use a regular virtual one for your account/site from which you send mailings to subscribers, it is best to additionally purchase a dedicated IP address.

If your email or IP is on an anti-spam blacklist, your emails will not be delivered to the recipient and this will negatively affect the reputation of your domain and IP address. Also, you should not advertise your site with spam emails. The programs analyze the letter, see a link to your website and mark it as a resource that is advertised using spam. And in the future, all your emails will be identified as unwanted. Is your IP blacklisted? .

Where did the word “spam” come from?

But in the end, some facts from history. There is a version that after World War II there were huge reserves of Hormel Foods canned food, which was intended for soldiers. To sell not very fresh products, the company conducted an advertising campaign. The word SPAM (SPiced hAM) was absolutely everywhere, it was in all the newspapers, broadcast on the radio. It was impossible to hide from this word. This action only caused dissatisfaction, since no one was in a hurry to buy canned food.

If you have any questions or additions to this article, please leave comments. The company is open for communication!