What is Spam Email?

The definition of spam when applied to e-mail is Unsolicited Bulk E-mail (UCE), e-mail that has been sent in bulk to recipients who have not given permission for the message to be sent to them. Spam is also known as junk e-mail.

Spamming is flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message to multiple addresses. Spam messages are almost always commercial or fraudulent messages, and are quite often sent with false return address information.

A rapidly growing form of spam is what is known as a Phishing scam. These are messages sent in bulk to a random list of people, claiming to be from a company they may trust – such as a bank or e-bay. These Phishing e-mails will look absolutely genuine to even the most experience Internet user, but will in fact be linking through to a fraudsters website with the aim of stealing personal information from you.

Spammers quite often fake the “From” address of a message, that way the message will not be returned to them in the case of any problems.

Combating spam can be very difficult. Spammers often use networks of computer in foreign countries to avoid local anti-spam laws, or even make use of hijacked networks of computers that have been infected with virus or Trojans.

These hijacked computers are known as a "Bot-Net"... a network of hundreds or even thousands of computers that are under the control of a hacker. A hacker who controls such a "Bot-Net" will rent time on these computers to the spammers who then use them to send out millions of spam messages.

Other guides

• 01. What is spam?
  
  
• 02. Why is junk email called spam?
  
  
• 03. How do they get my address?
  
  
• 04. Fighting back against spam.
  
  
• 05. Types of spam filtering software and how they fail.
  
  
• 06. The ClearMyMail difference.
  
  

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