Varied Venues of Spam

Outside of the more obvious and widespread e-mail based spam, there are other venues in which spammers attempt to convey their messages.

One popular spamming medium is instant messaging services, such as MSN Messenger, ICQ, and Yahoo Instant Messenger. Most sites that offer instant messaging services have public listings of users, called user directories, where one can search for people to chat with based on a number of different criterion, such as age range, geographic location, and gender. Unfortunately, this information is also be used by advertisers for demographic targeting purposes, which enables them to collect specific information about people, including their messenger username. All they need to do then is sign into their own IM service and send messages. Most messenger spammers have scriptable software that gives them the ability to send spam to millions of usernames at one time.

Another area that is vulnerable to spammers is discussion forums. In this situation, the spammer is one who simply posts repetitive messages over and over again, without any purpose of contributing to the topic being discussed.

In conjunction with posting off-topic messages, the spammer utilizes the ability afforded by the forum software to create a signature line that shows up at the end of each of their posts. So while they may not actually spam something in the post itself, they may hope to gain view to their signature line that does contain a link to elsewhere.

One relatively new, and significantly costly type of spam is cell phone text messaging. Due to the fees associated with the receipt of text messages, this can easily cause a financial burden to the cell phone owner.

Guestbook, wiki, and blog spam are also on the rise. In this scenario, a person gets their messages out by leaving irrelevent commentary on people's personal websites, especially if they feel that their message will get alot of traffic. This exploit is due to blog owners allowing their visitors to leave comments on blog entries made.

Spam Videos

Spam Recipe Headlines

Reader recipe: SPAM Stuffed French Toast

SPAM celebrates its 75th anniversary in 2012, and HaeWon Miller of Greenwood couldn't be happier: Miller's stuffed French toast recipe is in the running to win the Great American SPAM Championship recipe contest sponsored by Hormel Foods. The winners will be announced later this month.

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Reader Recipe: SPAM Pancake Tacos

Kaden Friend of Indianapolis is already an award-winning chef. Not only did the youngster's pancake taco recipe win a blue ribbon at last year's Indiana State Fair, but it's now in the running to take the Kid Chef category of the Great American SPAM Championship recipe contest. (The winner will be announced later this month.)

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Great Falls man creates Spam magic

While some people cringe at the thought of eating Spam, Joel Purtle of Great Falls is hoping the oft-maligned processed meat product gains him national notoriety.

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Cooks Calendar

World Famous Chicken Bog, winning local SPAM recipe, who’s your krewe, and cooking classes

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Spam Attack Stops Community's Emails To Residents

Cyberattacks often target large companies and organizations. The village of Glendale is neither.

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