What is spam?

Spam used to be funny when Monty Python's Flying Circus served up a comedy sketch about a restaurant that served only dishes containing the dubious canned meat. But today - more than 30 years later - we are no longer laughing as hard because the word spam has now gotten a new meaning. It has become the established name for the heaps of unwanted e-mails promoting Viagra, penis enlargement pills, unknown stocks and other questionable items that clog up inboxes of most Internet users. And the name spam is very well chosen, because the point of the Monty Python joke was exactly that you can't avoid spam no matter what.
 

E-mail spam, also known as bulk or junk e-mail, can be defined as e-mail messages that are unsolicited and sent in bulk. Spamming pays off because advertisers have no operating costs beyond the management of their mailing lists, and it is difficult to hold senders accountable for their mass mailings. Therefore, spammers are numerous and the volume of unsolicited mail has become very high.

 

180 billion or more spam mails were sent per day in June 2007 and according to most research spam now makes up about 90 percent of all e-mail traffic. The global cost of spam in 2007 is predicted to reach ?53bn ($107bn) compared to ?27bn ($55bn) in 2005 and in the US, the Federal Bureau of Investigation had 70 spam-related cases under active investigation in June 2007.

 

Increasingly, spammers use networks of virus-infected PCs - so-called zombies - to send their unsolicited messages. These zombie networks are known as botnets. An estimated 80 percent of global e-mail spam is sent by zombie PCs. According to the Register Of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO), 80 percent of spam received by Internet users in North America and Europe can be traced to a hard-core group of around 200 known spam gangs. These gangs consist of an estimated 500-600 professional spammers with ever-changing aliases and domains.

 

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