What is Spam ?
- Spam is garbage mail or garbage newsgroup postings and also the spam is defined as unsolicited email.
- However, if a long-lost person finds your email address and sends you a message, this could hardly be called spam, even though it is unsolicited.
- Real spam is generally email advertising for some product sent to a mailing list or newsgroup.
- Unsolicited commercial email messages sent in bulk, often to a purchased (or stolen) mailing list that contained your address.
- Counterfeit messages from reliable senders that attempt to trick you into supplying your personal information.
- Misleading messages from people you know whose email accounts have been hacked.
- Not all spam is illegal, but some of it is.
Types of spam email
Phishing Fraud Email
- Phishing spam is sent to trick recipients into visiting a website and provide financial information such as a credit card number or other sensitive data.
- This spam is cleverly disguised and at first glance actually appear to be from the institution that they are masking.
- This type of spam is fraudulent, mis-representative and potentially damaging to the recipient.
Example: Update Your Account
Emotional Scam Email
- This type of spam attempts to trick email recipients by playing on their emotions.
- This is done primarily in two ways; either by raising the hopes of the recipient with suggestions of monetary winnings (i.e. lottery or International Money Transfer scams) or by playing on their sentimental nature (illness, romance, etc.).
A good example of this is the Microsoft Global Email Lottery Spam.
Virus and Malware Email
- This type of email spam will include an attachment or a link to a file that will trigger some virus of malware to install to the recipients computer when the attachment is opened or the link visited.
- Sometimes they are sent automatically from one computer to others using scripts in the virus that cause the recipient computer to forward it on to other people in their address book without the recipient’s knowledge.
- Because these emails appear to be coming from someone that you know, they make recipients vulnerable.
- The objective of virus spam is to spread computer viruses across networks via email.
Example: Virus attachement email
Viagra, Replica Watch, Stock and Weight Loss Email
- Viagra, Replica Watch, Stock and Weight Loss Email spam is very common. Most of us are inundated with emails encouraging us to purchase prescription medications, replica watches or stock of some kind.
- This type of spam doesn’t pretend to be anything but an unsolicited attempt to get people to click – and people do (one in every 12,500,000 spam messages that are sent!) – that’s why we keep getting it.
- This spam burdens computer resources and networks. As a result, it costs companies and individuals time, productivity and money for anti-spam technology required to reduce it.
Example: Online purchase
Nonsensical Email
- This type of email spam includes those email spam messages that many people receive which don’t appear to have any rationale whatsoever.
- They aren’t trying to sell us anything.They do not contain viruses or malware. They don’t try so promote websites or defraud us in any way.
- The objective of nonsensical spam is simply to test anti-spam and content filters so that spammers can more successfully deliver future messages.
Example: Nonsensical Email
Unsolicited Commercial Email
- This type of email messages sent from actual businesses who are trying to spread the news and generate sales for their products and services via email to people who did not sign up directly to receive email from them.
- This email based on a promotion of a product.
Example: Email marketing promotions
