Spam (Electronic) Facts @ QuickRevenues.com

Spam is the abuse of electronic messaging systems (including most broadcast media, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately. While the most widely recognized form of spam is e-mail spam E-mail spam, also known as junk e-mail, is a subset of spam that involves nearly identical messages sent to numerous recipients by e-mail. A common synonym for spam is unsolicited bulk e-mail . Definitions of spam usually include the aspects that email is unsolicited and sent in bulk. "UCE" refers specifically to unsolicited commercial e-, the term is applied to similar abuses in other media: instant messaging spam Messaging spam, sometimes called SPIM, is a type of spam targeting users of instant messaging services, Usenet newsgroup spam Newsgroup spam is a type of spam where the targets are Usenet newsgroups, Web search engine spam Spamdexing involves a number of methods, such as repeating unrelated phrases, to manipulate the relevancy or prominence of resources indexed by a search engine, in a manner inconsistent with the purpose of the indexing system. Some consider it to be a part of search engine optimization, though there are many search engine optimization methods that, spam in blogs Spam in blogs is a form of spamdexing. It is done by automatically posting random comments or promoting commercial services to blogs, wikis, guestbooks, or other publicly accessible online discussion boards. Any web application that accepts and displays hyperlinks submitted by visitors may be a target,wiki spam Spamdexing involves a number of methods, such as repeating unrelated phrases, to manipulate the relevancy or prominence of resources indexed by a search engine, in a manner inconsistent with the purpose of the indexing system. Some consider it to be a part of search engine optimization, though there are many search engine optimization methods that, online classified ads Classified advertising is a form of advertising which is particularly common in newspapers, online and other periodicals, e.g. free ads papers or Pennysavers. Classified advertising differs from standard advertising or business models in that it allows private individuals to solicit sales for products and services spam, mobile phone messaging spam Mobile phone spam is a form of spamming directed at the text messaging service of a mobile phone. It is described as mobile spamming, SMS spam, text spam, or SpaSMS but is most frequently referred to as m-spam, Internet forum spam Forum spam is the creating of messages that are advertisements, abusive, or otherwise unwanted on Internet forums. It is generally done by automated spambots, junk fax transmissions Junk faxes are a form of telemarketing where unsolicited advertisements are sent via fax transmission. Junk faxes are the faxed equivalent of spam or junk mail. Proponents of this advertising medium often use the terms broadcast fax or fax advertising to avoid the negative connotation of the term junk fax, social networking A social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most social network services are web based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact, such as e-mail and instant messaging services spam, and file sharing network spam.

Spamming remains economically viable 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. Because the barrier to entry In economics and mostly especially in the theory of competition, barriers to entry are obstacles in the path of a firm that make it difficult to enter a given market is so low, spammers are numerous, and the volume of unsolicited mail has become very high. The costs, such as lost productivity and fraud, are borne by the public and by Internet service providers An Internet service provider , also sometimes referred to as an Internet access provider (IAP), is a company that offers its customers access to the Internet. The ISP connects to its customers using a data transmission technology appropriate for delivering Internet Protocol datagrams, such as dial-up, DSL, cable modem, wireless or dedicated high-, which have been forced to add extra capacity to cope with the deluge. Spamming is widely reviled, and has been the subject of legislation in many jurisdictions.^[1]

People who create electronic spam are called spammers.^[2]

Spamming in different media

E-mail spam

Main article: E-mail spam E-mail spam, also known as junk e-mail, is a subset of spam that involves nearly identical messages sent to numerous recipients by e-mail. A common synonym for spam is unsolicited bulk e-mail . Definitions of spam usually include the aspects that email is unsolicited and sent in bulk. "UCE" refers specifically to unsolicited commercial e-

E-mail spam, known as unsolicited bulk Email (UBE), junk mail, or unsolicited commercial email (UCE), is the practice of sending unwanted e-mail messages, frequently with commercial content, in large quantities to an indiscriminate set of recipients.

Spam in e-mail started to become a problem when the Internet was opened up to the general public in the mid-1990s. It grew exponentially over the following years, and today comprises some 80 to 85% of all the email in the world, by conservative estimate.^[3]

Pressure to make e-mail spam illegal has been successful in some jurisdictions, but less so in others. Spammers take advantage of this fact, and frequently outsource parts of their operations to countries where spamming will not get them into legal trouble.

Increasingly, e-mail spam today is sent via "zombie A zombie computer is a computer attached to the Internet that has been compromised by a hacker, a computer virus, or a trojan horse. Generally, a compromised machine is only one of many in a botnet, and will be used to perform malicious tasks of one sort or another under remote direction. Most owners of zombie computers are unaware that their networks", networks of virus A computer virus is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer. The term "virus" is also commonly but erroneously used to refer to other types of malware, adware, and spyware programs that do not have the reproductive ability. A true virus can only spread from one computer to another when its host is taken to the- or worm A computer worm is a self-replicating computer program. It uses a network to send copies of itself to other nodes and it may do so without any user intervention. Unlike a virus, it does not need to attach itself to an existing program. Worms almost always cause at least some harm to the network, if only by consuming bandwidth, whereas viruses-infected personal computers in homes and offices around the globe; many modern worms install a backdoor A backdoor in a computer system is a method of bypassing normal authentication, securing remote access to a computer, obtaining access to plaintext, and so on, while attempting to remain undetected. The backdoor may take the form of an installed program (e.g., Back Orifice), or could be a modification to an existing program or hardware device which allows the spammer access to the computer and use it for malicious purposes. This complicates attempts to control the spread of spam, as in many cases the spam doesn't even originate from the spammer. In November 2008 an ISP, McColo, which was providing service to botnet operators, was depeered Peering is a voluntary interconnection of administratively separate Internet networks for the purpose of exchanging traffic between the customers of each network. The pure definition of peering is settlement-free or "sender keeps all," meaning that neither party pays the other for the exchanged traffic, instead, each derives revenue from and spam dropped 50%-75% Internet-wide. At the same time, it is becoming clear that malware Malware, short for malicious software, is software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner's informed consent. The expression is a general term used by computer professionals to mean a variety of forms of hostile, intrusive, or annoying software or program code. The term "computer virus" is sometimes used as authors, spammers, and phishers In the field of computer security, phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites, auction sites, online payment are learning from each other, and possibly forming various kinds of partnerships.^{[citation needed]}

An industry of e-mail address harvesting E-mail harvesting is the process of obtaining lists of e-mail addresses using various methods for use in bulk e-mail or other purposes usually grouped as spam is dedicated to collecting email addresses and selling compiled databases.^[4] Some of these address harvesting approaches rely on users not reading the fine print of agreements, resulting in them agreeing to send messages indiscriminately to their contacts. This is a common approach in social networking spam Social networking spam is spam directed at users of internet social networking services such as MySpace. Users of social networking services can send notes, that may include embedded links to other social network locations or even outside sites, to one another such as that generated by the social networking site Quechup Quechup is a social networking website that came to prominence in 2007 when it used automatic email invitations for viral marketing to all the e-mail addresses in its members address books. This was described as a "spam campaign" and raised a great deal of adverse comment.^[5]

Instant Messaging Spam

Main article: Messaging spam Messaging spam, sometimes called SPIM, is a type of spam targeting users of instant messaging services

Instant Messaging spam, known also as spim (a portmanteau A portmanteau (pronounced /pɔrtmænˈtoʊ/ ) or portmanteau word is used broadly to mean a blend of two (or more) words or morphemes and their meanings into one new word, and narrowly in linguistics fields to mean only a blend of two or more function words of spam and IM, short for instant messaging), makes use of instant messaging Instant messaging is a form of real-time communication between two or more people based on typed text. The text is conveyed via devices connected over a network such as the Internet systems. Although less ubiquitous than its e-mail counterpart, spim is reaching more users all the time. According to a report from Ferris Research, 500 million spim IMs were sent in 2003, twice the level of 2002. As instant messaging tends to not be blocked by firewalls it is an especially useful channel for spammers.

One way to protect yourself against spammers is to only allow messages from people on your friends lists. Many email services now offer spam filtering (Junk Mail) and some instant messaging providers offer hints and tips on avoiding email spam and spim (BT Yahoo for example).

Newsgroup spam and forum spam

Main article: Newsgroup spam Newsgroup spam is a type of spam where the targets are Usenet newsgroups Main article: Forum spam Forum spam is the creating of messages that are advertisements, abusive, or otherwise unwanted on Internet forums. It is generally done by automated spambots

Mobile phone spam

Main article: Mobile phone spam Mobile phone spam is a form of spamming directed at the text messaging service of a mobile phone. It is described as mobile spamming, SMS spam, text spam, or SpaSMS but is most frequently referred to as m-spam

Mobile phone spam is directed at the text messaging Text messaging, or texting, is a colloquial term referring to the exchange of brief written messages between mobile phones, over cellular networks. While the term most often refers to messages sent using the Short Message Service , it has been extended to include messages containing image, video, and sound content, such as MMS messages. Individual service of a mobile phone A mobile phone or cell phone is a long-range, electronic device used for mobile telecommunications over a cellular network of specialized base stations known as cell sites. Cell phones differ from cordless telephones, which only offer telephony service within a limited range, e.g. within a home or an office, through a fixed line and a base station. This can be especially irritating to customers not only for the inconvenience but also because of the fee they may be charged per text message received in some markets. The term "SpaSMS" was coined at the adnews website Adland in 2000 to describe spam SMS.

Online game messaging spam

Many online games allow players to contact each other via player-to-player messaging, chat rooms, or public discussion areas. What qualifies as spam varies from game to game, but usually this term applies to all forms of message flooding, violating the terms of service contract for the website. This is particularly common in MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft World of Warcraft, often referred to as WoW, is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the fantasy Warcraft universe, which was first introduced by Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994. World of Warcraft takes place within the Warcraft world of Azeroth, approximately four and others where the spammers are trying to sell game related items for real world money, chiefly among these items is in-game currency. This kind of spamming is also called Real Money Trading (RMT).

In World of Warcraft it is common for spammers to advertise sites that sell gold in multiple methods of spam. They send spam via the ingame private messaging system, via the ingame mailing system, via yelling publicly to everyone in the area and by creating a lot of characters and committing suicide (with hacks) and making a row of bodies resemble a site URL. The URL takes the user to a gold selling website.

Another frequently used technique is using bots to post messages on random users' profiles to a spam account's channel page, along with enticing text and images, usually of a sexually suggestive nature. These pages may include their own or other users' videos, again often suggestive. The main purpose of these accounts is to draw people to their link in the home page The homepage is the URL or local file that automatically loads when a web browser starts or when the browser's "home" button is pressed. One can turn this feature off and on, as well as specify a URL for the page to be loaded section of their profile.

YouTube has blocked the posting of links but people can still manage to get their message across by replacing all instances of a period with the word "dot." For instance, typing out example dot com instead of example.com bypasses the filter set in place. In addition, YouTube has implemented a CAPTCHA A CAPTCHA or Captcha is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer. The process usually involves one computer (a server) asking a user to complete a simple test which the computer is able to generate and grade. Because other computers are unable to solve the CAPTCHA, any user system that makes rapid posting of repeated comments much more difficult than before, because of abuse in the past by mass-spammers who would flood people's profiles with thousands of repetitive comments.

Yet another kind is actual video spam, giving the uploaded movie a name and description with a popular figure or event which is likely to draw attention, or within the video has a certain image timed to come up as the video's thumbnail Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures, used to help in recognizing and organizing them, serving the same role for images as a normal text index does for words. In the age of digital images, visual search engines and image-organizing programs normally use thumbnails, as do most modern operating systems or desktop environments, such as image to mislead the viewer. The actual content of the video ends up being totally unrelated, a Rickroll, sometimes offensive, or just features on-screen text of a link to the site being promoted.

Others may upload videos presented in an infomercial-like format selling their product which feature actors and paid testimonials, though the promoted product or service is of dubious quality and would likely not pass the scrutiny of a standards and practices department at a television station or cable network.

Noncommercial spam

E-mail and other forms of spamming have been used for purposes other than advertisements. Many early Usenet spams were religious or political. Serdar Argic, for instance, spammed Usenet with historical revisionist screeds. A number of evangelists have spammed Usenet and e-mail media with preaching messages. A growing number of criminals are also using spam to perpetrate various sorts of fraud,^[7] and in some cases have used it to lure people to locations where they have been kidnapped, held for ransom, and even murdered.^[8]

Geographical origins of spams

A 2007 statistical analysis found that the USA was the leader in the number of spam messages around the world. Spammers all over the world use thousands of zombie computers located in the US (which has the most networked computers, and ISPs with relatively poorly-secured network endpoints according to SophosLabs, which performed the analysis) to send spam. The study did not attempt to identify the location of the spammers themselves, just the spamming computers.

The list of top 12 countries that spread spam around the globe is presented below:

USA: 28.4%;
South Korea: 5.2%;
China (including Hong Kong): 4.9%;
Russia: 4.4%;
Brazil: 3.7%;
France: 3.6%;
Germany: 3.4%;
Turkey: 5.%;
Poland: 2.7%;
United Kingdom (specifically Great Britain): 2.4%;
Romania: 2.3%;
Mexico: 1.9%;

Other countries: 33.9%^[9]

History

Pre-Internet spam

In the late 19th Century Western Union allowed telegraphic messages on its network to be sent to multiple destinations. The first recorded instance of a mass unsolicited commercial telegram is from May 1864.^[10] Up until the Great Depression wealthy North American residents would be deluged with nebulous investment offers. This problem never fully emerged in Europe to the degree that it did in the Americas, because telegraphy was regulated by national post offices in the European region.

Origin of the term

According to the Internet Society and other sources, the term spam is derived from the 1970 SPAM sketch of the BBC television comedy series "Monty Python's Flying Circus"^[11]^[12]

The sketch is set in a cafe where nearly every item on the menu includes SPAM canned luncheon meat. As the waiter recites the SPAM-filled menu, a chorus of Viking patrons drowns out all conversations with a song repeating "SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM... lovely SPAM! wonderful SPAM!", hence "SPAMming" the dialogue. The excessive amount of SPAM mentioned in the sketch is a reference to the propinquity in the United Kingdom of imported canned meat products - particularly corned beef from Argentina - in the years after World War II as the country struggled to rebuild its agricultural base. SPAM captured a large slice of the British market within lower economic classes and became a byword among British schoolboys of the 1960s for low-grade fodder due to its commonality, monotonic taste and cheap price - whence the humour of the Python sketch.

In the 1980s the term was adopted to describe certain abusive users who frequented BBSs and MUDs, who would repeat "SPAM" a huge number of times to scroll other users' text off the screen.^[13] In early Chat rooms services like PeopleLink and the early days of AOL, they actually flooded the screen with quotes from the Monty Python Spam sketch. With internet connections over phone lines, typically running at 1200 or even 300 BAUD, it could take an enormous amount of time for a spammy logo, drawn in ASCII art to scroll to completion on a viewer's terminal. Sending an irritating, large, meaningless block of text in this way was called spamming. This was used as a tactic by insiders of a group that wanted to drive newcomers out of the room so the usual conversation could continue. It was also used to prevent members of rival groups from chatting—for instance, Star Wars fans often invaded Star Trek chat rooms, filling the space with blocks of text until the Star Trek fans left.^[14] This act, previously called flooding or trashing, came to be known as spamming.^[15] The term was soon applied to a large amount of text broadcast by many users.

It later came to be used on Usenet to mean excessive multiple posting—the repeated posting of the same message. The unwanted message would appear in many if not all newsgroups, just as SPAM appeared in nearly all the menu items in the Monty Python sketch. The first usage of this sense was by Joel Furr^[16] in the aftermath of the ARMM incident of March 31, 1993, in which a piece of experimental software released dozens of recursive messages onto the news.admin.policy newsgroup.^[17] This use had also become established—to spam Usenet was flooding newsgroups with junk messages. The word was also attributed to the flood of "Make Money Fast" messages that clogged many newsgroups during the 1990s.^{[citation needed]}

In 1998, the New Oxford Dictionary of English, which had previously only defined "spam" in relation to the trademarked food product, added a second definition to its entry for "spam": "Irrelevant or inappropriate messages sent on the Internet to a large number of newsgroups or users."^[18]

There are three popular false etymologies of the word "spam". The first, promulgated by early spammers Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel, is that "spamming" is what happens when one dumps a can of SPAM luncheon meat into a fan blade. The second is the backronym "shit posing as mail." The third is similar, using "stupid pointless annoying messages." Another false etymology is the Esperanto interpretation: The term spamo (with the o-ending designating nouns) makes sense as "senpete alsendita mesaĝo", which means "a message sent to someone without request".

History of Internet "spam"

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be and removed. (September 2009)

The earliest documented spam was a message advertising the availability of a new model of Digital Equipment Corporation computers sent to 393 recipients on ARPANET in 1978, by Gary Thuerk.^[16]^[19]^[20] The term "spam" for this practice had not yet been applied.

Spamming had been practiced as a prank by participants in multi-user dungeon games, to fill their rivals' accounts with unwanted electronic junk.^[20] The first known electronic chain letter, titled Make Money Fast, was released in 1988.

The first major commercial spam incident started on March 5, 1994, when a husband and wife team of lawyers, Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel, began using bulk Usenet posting to advertise immigration law services. The incident was commonly termed the "Green Card spam", after the subject line of the postings. Defiant in the face of widespread condemnation, the attorneys claimed their detractors were hypocrites or "zealouts", claimed they had a free speech right to send unwanted commercial messages, and labeled their opponents "anti-commerce radicals." The couple wrote a controversial book entitled How to Make a Fortune on the Information Superhighway.^[20]

Later that year a poster operating under the alias Serdar Argic posted antagonistic messages denying the Armenian Genocide to tens of thousands of Usenet discussions that had been searched for the word Turkey.

Within a few years, the focus of spamming (and anti-spam efforts) moved chiefly to e-mail, where it remains today.^[13] Arguably, the aggressive email spamming by a number of high-profile spammers such as Sanford Wallace of Cyber Promotions in the mid-to-late 1990s contributed to making spam predominantly an email phenomenon in the public mind.^{[citation needed]}

By 2009, the majority of spam sent around the world was in the English language; spammers began using automatic translation services to send spam in other languages.^[21]

Trademark issues

Hormel Foods Corporation, the maker of SPAM luncheon meat, does not object to the Internet use of the term "spamming". However, they did ask that the capitalized word "SPAM" be reserved to refer to their product and trademark.^[22] By and large, this request is obeyed in forums which discuss spam. In Hormel Foods v SpamArrest, Hormel attempted to assert its trademark rights against SpamArrest, a software company, from using the mark "spam", since Hormel owns the trademark. In a dilution claim, Hormel argued that Spam Arrest's use of the term "spam" had endangered and damaged "substantial goodwill and good reputation" in connection with its trademarked lunch meat and related products. Hormel also asserts that Spam Arrest's name so closely resembles its luncheon meat that the public might become confused, or might think that Hormel endorses Spam Arrest's products.

Hormel did not prevail. Attorney Derek Newman responded on behalf of Spam Arrest: "Spam has become ubiquitous throughout the world to describe unsolicited commercial e-mail. No company can claim trademark rights on a generic term." Hormel stated on its website: "Ultimately, we are trying to avoid the day when the consuming public asks, 'Why would Hormel Foods name its product after junk email?'".^[23]

Hormel also made two attempts that were dismissed in 2005 to revoke the marks "SPAMBUSTER".^[24] and Spam Cube.^[25] Hormel's Corporate Attorney Melanie J. Neumann also sent SpamCop's Julian Haight a letter on August 27, 1999 requesting that he delete an objectionable image (a can of Hormel's SPAM luncheon meat product in a trash can), change references to UCE spam to all lower case letters, and confirm his agreement to do so.^[26]

Costs of spam

The European Union's Internal Market Commission estimated in 2001 that "junk e-mail" cost Internet users €10 billion per year worldwide.^[27]

The California legislature found that spam cost United States organizations alone more than $13 billion in 2007, including lost productivity and the additional equipment, software, and manpower needed to combat the problem.^[28]

Spam's direct effects include the consumption of computer and network resources, and the cost in human time and attention of dismissing unwanted messages. In addition, spam has costs stemming from the kinds of spam messages sent, from the ways spammers send them, and from the arms race between spammers and those who try to stop or control spam. In addition, there are the opportunity cost of those who forgo the use of spam-afflicted systems. There are the direct costs, as well as the indirect costs borne by the victims—both those related to the spamming itself, and to other crimes that usually accompany it, such as financial theft, identity theft, data and intellectual property theft, virus and other malware infection, child pornography, fraud, and deceptive marketing.

The cost to providers of search engines is not insignificant:

“

The secondary consequence of spamming is that search engine indexes are inundated with useless pages, increasing the cost of each processed query.^[2]

”

The methods of spammers are likewise costly. Because spamming contravenes the vast majority of ISPs' acceptable-use policies, most spammers have for many years gone to some trouble to conceal the origins of their spam. E-mail, Usenet, and instant-message spam are often sent through insecure proxy servers belonging to unwilling third parties. Spammers frequently use false names, addresses, phone numbers, and other contact information to set up "disposable" accounts at various Internet service providers. In some cases, they have used falsified or stolen credit card numbers to pay for these accounts. This allows them to quickly move from one account to the next as each one is discovered and shut down by the host ISPs.

The costs of spam also include the collateral costs of the struggle between spammers and the administrators and users of the media threatened by spamming. ^[29]

Many users are bothered by spam because it impinges upon the amount of time they spend reading their e-mail. Many also find the content of spam frequently offensive, in that pornography is one of the most frequently advertised products. Spammers send their spam largely indiscriminately, so pornographic ads may show up in a work place e-mail inbox—or a child's, the latter of which is illegal in many jurisdictions. Recently, there has been a noticeable increase in spam advertising websites that contain child pornography.^{[citation needed]}

Some spammers argue that most of these costs could potentially be alleviated by having spammers reimburse ISPs and persons for their material.^{[citation needed]} There are three problems with this logic: first, the rate of reimbursement they could credibly budget is not nearly high enough to pay the direct costs^{[citation needed]}, second, the human cost (lost mail, lost time, and lost opportunities) is basically unrecoverable, and third, spammers often use stolen bank accounts and credit cards to finance their operations, and would conceivably do so to pay off any fines imposed.

E-mail spam exemplifies a tragedy of the commons: spammers use resources (both physical and human), without bearing the entire cost of those resources. In fact, spammers commonly do not bear the cost at all. This raises the costs for everyone. In some ways spam is even a potential threat to the entire e-mail system, as operated in the past.

Since e-mail is so cheap to send, a tiny number of spammers can saturate the Internet with junk mail. Although only a tiny percentage of their targets are motivated to purchase their products (or fall victim to their scams), the low cost may provide a sufficient conversion rate to keep the spamming alive. Furthermore, even though spam appears not to be economically viable as a way for a reputable company to do business, it suffices for professional spammers to convince a tiny proportion of gullible advertisers that it is viable for those spammers to stay in business. Finally, new spammers go into business every day, and the low costs allow a single spammer to do a lot of harm before finally realizing that the business is not profitable.

Some companies and groups "rank" spammers; spammers who make the news are sometimes referred to by these rankings.^[30]^[31] The secretive nature of spamming operations makes it difficult to determine how proliferated an individual spammer is, thus making the spammer hard to track, block or avoid. Also, spammers may target different networks to different extents, depending on how successful they are at attacking the target. Thus considerable resources are employed to actually measure the amount of spam generated by a single person or group. For example, victims that use common anti-spam hardware, software or services provide opportunities for such tracking. Nevertheless, such rankings should be taken with a grain of salt.

General costs of spam

In all cases listed above, including both commercial and non-commercial, "spam happens" because of a positive Cost-benefit analysis result if the cost to recipients is excluded as an externality the spammer can avoid paying.

Cost is the combination of

Overhead: The costs and overhead of electronic spamming include bandwidth, developing or acquiring an email/wiki/blog spam tool, taking over or acquiring a host/zombie, etc.
Transaction cost: The incremental cost of contacting each additional recipient once a method of spamming is constructed, multiplied by the number of recipients. (see CAPTCHA as a method of increasing transaction costs)
Risks: Chance and severity of legal and/or public reactions, including damages and punitive damages
Damage: Impact on the community and/or communication channels being spammed (see Newsgroup spam)

Benefit is the total expected profit from spam, which may include any combination of the commercial and non-commercial reasons listed above. It is normally linear, based on the incremental benefit of reaching each additional spam recipient, combined with the conversion rate. The conversion rate for botnet-generated spam has recently been measured to be around one in 12,000,000 for pharmaceutical spam and one in 200,000 for infection sites as used by the Storm botnet.^[32]

Spam is prevalent on the Internet because the transaction cost of electronic communications is radically less than any alternate form of communication, far outweighing the current potential losses, as seen by the amount of spam currently in existence. Spam continues to spread to new forms of electronic communication as the gain (number of potential recipients) increases to levels where the cost/benefit becomes positive. Spam has most recently evolved to include wikispam and blogspam as the levels of readership increase to levels where the overhead is no longer the dominating factor. According to the above analysis, spam levels will continue to increase until the cost/benefit analysis is balanced^{[citation needed]}.

In crime

Spam can be used to spread computer viruses, trojan horses or other malicious software. The objective may be identity theft, or worse (e.g., advance fee fraud). Some spam attempts to capitalize on human greed whilst other attempts to use the victims' inexperience with computer technology to trick them (e.g., phishing).

On May 31, 2007, one of the world's most prolific spammers, Robert Alan Soloway, was arrested by U.S. authorities.^[33] Described as one of the top ten spammers in the world, Soloway was charged with 35 criminal counts, including mail fraud, wire fraud, e-mail fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering.^[33] Prosecutors allege that Soloway used millions of "zombie" computers to distribute spam during 2003.^{[citation needed]} This is the first case in which U.S. prosecutors used identity theft laws to prosecute a spammer for taking over someone else's Internet domain name.^{[citation needed]}

Political issues

The neutrality of this section is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. (December 2007)

Spamming remains a hot discussion topic. In 2004, the seized Porsche of an indicted spammer was advertised on the Internet;^[34] this revealed the extent of the financial rewards available to those who are willing to commit duplicitous acts online. However, some of the possible means used to stop spamming may lead to other side effects, such as increased government control over the Internet, loss of privacy, barriers to free expression, and the commercialization of e-mail.^{[citation needed]}

One of the chief values favored by many long-time Internet users and experts, as well as by many members of the public, is the free exchange of ideas. Many have valued the relative anarchy of the Internet, and bridle at the idea of restrictions placed upon it.^{[citation needed]} A common refrain from spam-fighters is that spamming itself abridges the historical freedom of the Internet, by attempting to force users to carry the costs of material which they would not choose.^{[citation needed]}

An ongoing concern expressed by parties such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU has to do with so-called "stealth blocking", a term for ISPs employing aggressive spam blocking without their users' knowledge. These groups' concern is that ISPs or technicians seeking to reduce spam-related costs may select tools which (either through error or design) also block non-spam e-mail from sites seen as "spam-friendly". SPEWS is a common target of these criticisms. Few object to the existence of these tools; it is their use in filtering the mail of users who are not informed of their use which draws fire.^{[citation needed]}

Some see spam-blocking tools as a threat to free expression—and laws against spamming as an untoward precedent for regulation or taxation of e-mail and the Internet at large. Even though it is possible in some jurisdictions to treat some spam as unlawful merely by applying existing laws against trespass and conversion, some laws specifically targeting spam have been proposed. In 2004, United States passed the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 which provided ISPs with tools to combat spam. This act allowed Yahoo! to successfully sue Eric Head, reportedly one of the biggest spammers in the world, who settled the lawsuit for several thousand U.S. dollars in June 2004. But the law is criticized by many for not being effective enough. Indeed, the law was supported by some spammers and organizations which support spamming, and opposed by many in the anti-spam community. Examples of effective anti-abuse laws that respect free speech rights include those in the U.S. against unsolicited faxes and phone calls, and those in Australia and a few U.S. states against spam.^{[citation needed]}

In November 2004, Lycos Europe released a screen saver called make LOVE not SPAM which made Distributed Denial of Service attacks on the spammers themselves. It met with a large amount of controversy and the initiative ended in December 2004.^{[citation needed]}

While most countries either outlaw or at least ignore spam, Bulgaria is the first and until now only one to partially legalize it. According to recent changes in the Bulgarian E-Commerce act anyone can send spam to mailboxes, owned by company or organization, as long as there is warning that this may be unsolicited commercial email in the message body. The law contains many other inadequate texts - for example the creation of a nationwide public electronic register of email addresses that do not want to receive spam, something valuable only as source for e-mail address harvesting.

Anti-spam policies may also be a form of disguised censorship, a way to ban access or reference to questioning alternative forums or blogs by an institution. This form of occult censorship is mainly used by private companies when they can not muzzle criticism by legal ways.^{[note 1]}

Court cases

United States

Sanford Wallace and Cyber Promotions were the target of a string of lawsuits, many of which were settled out of court, up through the famous 1998 Earthlink settlement^{[citation needed]}which put Cyber Promotions out of business.

Attorney Laurence Canter was disbarred by the Tennessee Supreme Court in 1997 for sending prodigious amounts of spam advertising his immigration law practice.

In 2005, Jason Smathers, a former America Online employee, pled guilty to charges of violating the CAN-SPAM Act. In 2003, he sold a list of approximately 93 million AOL subscriber e-mail addresses to Sean Dunaway who, in turn, sold the list to spammers.^[35]^[36]

In 2007, Robert Soloway lost a case in a federal court against the operator of a small Oklahoma-based Internet service provider who accused him of spamming. U.S. Judge Ralph G. Thompson granted a motion by plaintiff Robert Braver for a default judgment and permanent injunction against him. The judgment includes a statutory damages award of $10,075,000 under Oklahoma law.^[37]

In June 2007, two men were convicted of eight counts stemming from sending millions of e-mail spam messages that included hardcore pornographic images. Jeffrey A. Kilbride, 41, of Venice, California was sentenced to six years in prison, and James R. Schaffer, 41, of Paradise Valley, Arizona, was sentenced to 63 months. In addition, the two were fined $100,000, ordered to pay $77,500 in restitution to AOL, and ordered to forfeit more than $1.1 million, the amount of illegal proceeds from their spamming operation.^[38] The charges included conspiracy, fraud, money laundering, and transportation of obscene materials. The trial, which began on June 5, was the first to include charges under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, according to a release from the Department of Justice. The specific law that prosecutors used under the CAN-Spam Act was designed to crack down on the transmission of pornography in spam.^[39]

In 2005, Scott J. Filary and Donald E. Townsend of Tampa, Florida were sued by Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist for violating the Florida Electronic Mail Communications Act.^[40] The two spammers were required to pay $50,000 USD to cover the costs of investigation by the state of Florida, and a $1.1 million penalty if spamming were to continue, the $50,000 was not paid, or the financial statements provided were found to be inaccurate. The spamming operation was successfully shut down.^[41]

Edna Fiedler, 44, of Olympia, Washington, on June 25, 2008, pleaded guilty in a Tacoma court and was sentenced to 2 years imprisonment and 5 years of supervised release or probation in an Internet $1 million "Nigerian check scam." She conspired to commit bank, wire and mail fraud, against US citizens, specifically using Internet by having had an accomplice who shipped counterfeit checks and money orders to her from Lagos, Nigeria, last November. Fiedler shipped out $ 609,000 fake check and money orders when arrested and prepared to send additional $ 1.1 million counterfeit materials. Also, the U.S. Postal Service recently intercepted counterfeit checks, lottery tickets and eBay overpayment schemes with a face value of $2.1 billion.^[42]^[43]

United Kingdom

In the first successful case of its kind, Nigel Roberts from the Channel Islands won £270 against Media Logistics UK who sent junk e-mails to his personal account.^[44]

January 2007, a Sheriff Court in Scotland awarded Mr. Gordon Dick £750 (the then maximum sum which could be awarded in a Small Claim action) plus expenses of £618.66, a total of £1368.66 against Transcom Internet Services Ltd.^[45] for breaching anti-spam laws.^[46] Transcom had been legally represented at earlier hearings but were not represented at the proof, so Dick got his decree by default. It is the largest amount awarded in compensation in the United Kingdom since the Nigel Roberts case in 2005 above.

New Zealand

In October 2008, a vast international internet spam operation run from New Zealand was cited by American authorities as one of the world’s largest, and for a time responsible for up to a third of all unwanted emails.

In a statement the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) named Christchurch’s Lance Atkinson as one of the principals of the operation.

New Zealand’s Internal Affairs announced it had lodged a $200,000 claim in the High Court against Atkinson and his brother Shane Atkinson and courier Roland Smits, after raids in Christchurch.

This marked the first prosecution since the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act (UEMA) was passed in September 2007. The FTC said it had received more than three million complaints about spam messages connected to this operation, and estimated that it may be responsible for sending billions of illegal spam messages.

The US District Court froze the defendants’ assets to preserve them for consumer redress pending trial.^[47]

Newsgroups

news.admin.net-abuse.email

History

References

^ The Spamhaus Project - The Definition Of Spam
^ ^a ^b Gyöngyi, Zoltán; Garcia-Molina, Hector (2005), "Web spam taxonomy", Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Adversarial Information Retrieval on the Web (AIRWeb), 2005 in The 14th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW 2005) May 10, (Tue)-14 (Sat), 2005, Nippon Convention Center (Makuhari Messe), Chiba, Japan., New York, N.Y.: ACM Press, ISBN 1-59593-046-9, http://airweb.cse.lehigh.edu/2005/gyongyi.pdf
^ http://www.maawg.org/about/MAAWG20072Q_Metrics_Report.pdf
^ FileOn List Builder-Extract URL,MetaTags,Email,Phone,Fax from www-Optimized Webcrawler
^ Saul Hansell Social network launches worldwide spam campaign New York Times, September 13, 2007
^ The (Evil) Genius of Comment Spammers - Wired Magazine, March 2004
^ See: Advance fee fraud
^ SA cops, Interpol probe murder - News24.com, 2004-12-31
^ Most Spam comes from the USA, says SophosLabs
^ "Getting the message, at last". 2007-12-14. http://www.economist.com/opinion/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=10286400.
^ Internet Society's Internet Engineering Taskforce: A Set of Guidelines for Mass Unsolicited Mailings and Postings (spam*)
^ Origin of the term "spam" to mean net abuse
^ ^a ^b Origin of the term "spam" to mean net abuse
^ The Origins of Spam in Star Trek chat rooms
^ Spamming? (rec.games.mud) - Google Groups USENET archive, 1990-09-26
^ ^a ^b - Interviews with Gary Thuerk and Joel Furr
^ news.bbc.co.uk
^ "Oxford dictionary adds Net terms" on News.com
^ Reaction to the DEC Spam of 1978
^ ^a ^b ^c Tom Abate (May 3, 2008). "A very unhappy birthday to spam, age 30". San Francisco Chronicle.
^ Danchev, Dancho. "Spammers go multilingual, use automatic translation services." ZDNet. July 28, 2009. Retrieved on August 31, 2009.
^ [1] - Official SPAM Website
^ Hormel Foods v SpamArrest, Motion for Summary Judgment, Redacted Version (PDF)
^ Hormel Foods Corpn v Antilles Landscape Investments NV (2005) EWHC 13 (Ch)
^ "Hormel Foods Corporation v. Spam Cube, Inc". United States Patent and Trademark Office. http://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?pno=91171346&pty=OPP. Retrieved 2008-02-12.
^ Letter from Hormel's Corporate Attorney Melanie J. Neumann to SpamCop's Julian Haight
^ "Data protection: "Junk" e-mail costs internet users 10 billion a year worldwide - Commission study"
^ CALIFORNIA BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONS CODE
^ Thank the Spammers - William R. James 2003-03-10
^ Spamhaus' "TOP 10 spam service ISPs"
^ The 10 Worst ROKSO Spammers
^ Kanich, C.; C. Kreibich, K. Levchenko, B. Enright, G. Voelker, V. Paxson and S. Savage (2008-10-28). "Spamalytics: An Empirical Analysis of Spam Marketing Conversion" (PDF). Proceedings of Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS). Alexandria, VA, USA. http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/pubs/networking/2008-ccs-spamalytics.pdf. Retrieved 2008-11-05.
^ ^a ^b Alleged 'Seattle Spammer' arrested - CNET News.com
^ timewarner.com
^ U.S. v Jason Smathers and Sean Dunaway, amended complaint, US District Court for the Southern District of New York (2003). Retrieved 7 March 2007, from http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0623042aol1.html
^ Ex-AOL employee pleads guilty in spam case. (2005, February 4). CNN. Retrieved 7 March 2007, from http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/02/04/aol.spam.plea/
^ Braver v. Newport Internet Marketing Corporation et al. - U.S. District Court - Western District of Oklahoma (Oklahoma City), 2005-02-22
^ "Two Men Sentenced for Running International Pornographic Spamming Business". United States Department of Justice. October 12, 2007. http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2007/October/07_crm_813.html. Retrieved 2007-10-25.
^ Gaudin, Sharon, Two Men Convicted Of Spamming Pornography InformationWeek, June 26, 2007
^ "Crist Announces First Case Under Florida Anti-Spam Law". Office of the Florida Attorney General. http://myfloridalegal.com/__852562220065EE67.nsf/0/F978639D46005F6585256FD90050AAC9?Open&Highlight=0,spam. Retrieved 2008-02-23.
^ "Crist: Judgment Ends Duo's Illegal Spam, Internet Operations". Office of the Florida Attorney General. http://myfloridalegal.com/__852562220065EE67.nsf/0/F08DE06CB354A7D7852570CF005912A2?Open&Highlight=0,spam. Retrieved 2008-02-23.
^ upi.com, Woman gets prison for 'Nigerian' scam
^ yahoo.com, Woman Gets Two Years for Aiding Nigerian Internet Check Scam (PC World)
^ Businessman wins e-mail spam case - BBC News, 2005-12-27
^ Gordon Dick v Transcom Internet Service Ltd.
^ Article 13-Unsolicited communications
^ Kiwi spam network was 'world's biggest'

Specter, Michael (2007-08-06). "Damn Spam". The New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/06/070806fa_fact_specter. Retrieved 2007-08-02.

Notes

^ see for instance the black list of the French wikipedia encyclopedia

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Electronic spam

Spamtrackers SpamWiki: a peer-reviewed spam information and analysis resource.
Federal Trade Commission page advising people to forward spam e-mail to them
Slamming Spamming Resource on Spam
Why am I getting all this spam? CDT
Cybertelecom:: Federal SPAM law and policy
Reaction to the DEC Spam of 1978 Overview and text of the first known internet email spam.
Malware City - The Spam Omelette BitDefender’s weekly report on spam trends and techniques.
1 December 2009: arrest of a major spammer

Spamming

Protocols

E-mail	Address munging · Bulk email software · Directory Harvest Attack · Joe job · DNSBL · DNSWL · Spambot · Pink contract

Other	Autodialer/Robocall · Flyposting · Junk fax · Messaging · Mobile phone · Newsgroup · Telemarketing · VoIP

Anti-spam

Disposable e-mail address · E-mail authentication · SORBS · SpamCop · Spamhaus · List poisoning · Bayesian spam filtering · Network Abuse Clearinghouse

Spamdexing

Keyword stuffing · Google bomb · Scraper site · Link farm · Cloaking · Doorway page · URL redirection · Spam blogs · Sping · Forum spam · Blog spam · Social networking spam · Referrer spam

Internet fraud

Advance fee fraud · Lottery scam · Make Money Fast · Microcap stock fraud · Phishing · Vishing

The above information uses material from Wikipedia and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Some facts may not have been fully verified for accuracy. [Disclaimers]
This page was last archived by our server on Sun Dec 6 08:47:47 2009. [ refresh local cache ]
Displaying this page or its contents does not use any Wikimedia Foundation's resources.
The owners of this site proudly support the Wikimedia Foundation.

[Hide]▼

'Spam (Electronic)' News

news.google.com

AVX Breaks Out of Ascending Triangle Pattern

Sumfolio.com

AVX Corporation [[AVX]], a manufacturer and supplier of passive electronic components and other devices, broke out from an ascending triangle pattern after ...

and more »

Google News Search: Spam (electronic),
Sun Aug 9 08:39:40 2009

'Spam (Electronic)' Blogs

spam.bubble.ro

Own your own online electronic store today!

Inbox Interests

ue, 24 Nov 2009 18:29:22 GM

To remove yourself from our internal list Click Here. Or write to: iHost LLC PO Box 541297 Greenacres, FL 33454 You have received this marketing message from Inbox Interests. The products and/or services advertised in this email are the ...

Google Blogs Search: Spam (electronic),
Wed Dec 2 08:07:32 2009

'Spam (Electronic)' Answers

What can I do to prevent Yahoo! from wrongly identifying a newsletter as spam?
Q. Hi, I work as web manager for British Council Romania ( ). We issue our weekly electronic newsletter ( ) to more than 15,000 email addresses, many of which are Yahoo! Mail accounts. These email addresses have been collected on an opt-in basis during the last 3 years. All the subscribers have explicitly expressed their wish to receive the newsletter, and have also customized it according to their preferences (language, text/html and content). They also have the possibility of modifying their subscription or unsubscribing altogether from the newsletter at any time, through the two links at the end of every message. Lately, we have received a number of complaints from a few of our recipients, about Yahoo! delivering the newsletter… [cont.]
Asked by Radu-Petru Iliescu - Mon Nov 6 10:00:35 2006 - - 2 Answers - 0 Comments

A. On a subscriber-by-subscriber basis, they can click "not spam" whenever the message shows up in their Bulk or Spam folder. For a system-wide change, Yahoo! has a help page with lots of good info (and a contact form):
Answered by J.D. - Mon Nov 6 20:02:35 2006

Yahoo Answers Search: Spam (electronic),
Thu Sep 3 22:50:16 2009

[Hide]▲

or search for "Spam (electronic)" in:	Web:	The Entire Web	Web Directories	Related* Sites
	This Site:	Page Titles	Karr Network Sites*
	News:	Headlines	Weather	Events	Blogs
	Reference:	Encyclopedia	Dictionary	eTexts	Quotes
		Local Map	Answers
	Multimedia:	Images	Videos
	People:	Discussion Groups	Social Networking
	Shopping:	General Merch.	Consumer Opinion	Auctions	Classifieds

Spamming in different media

E-mail spam

Instant Messaging Spam

Newsgroup spam and forum spam

Mobile phone spam

Online game messaging spam

Spam targeting search engines (spamdexing)

Blog, wiki, and guestbook spam

Spam targeting video sharing sites

Noncommercial spam

Geographical origins of spams

History

Pre-Internet spam

Origin of the term

History of Internet "spam"

Trademark issues

Costs of spam

General costs of spam

In crime

Political issues

Court cases

United States

United Kingdom

New Zealand

Newsgroups

See also

History

References

Notes

Further reading

External links

See Also:

What Links Here:

Most Popular Pages:

Related 'Spam (Electronic)' Searches:

Spam (Electronic) Facts @ QuickRevenues.com

top user searches:	►