Most people realize that spam is the receipt of unwanted email, but what many don't know is that spam can come in various other forms as well. It can come through newsgroups, search engines, blogs and guestbooks, cell phones, and even instant messenger services. All types of spam serve a purpose, and all can be extremely disruptive, annoying, and malicious.
The reason spammers use the tactics they use is because it works for them financially. The only costs they incur are the ones associated with maintaining their mailing lists and maintaining an internet connection. Spammers run rampant for the most part, as noted by how many spam emails a person can expect to receive on any given day. I know that personally, a day doesn't go by where I haven't received at least 20 unwanted messages in some form or another. Nobody enjoys spam (except maybe the spammers themselves), and many countries have passed laws and regulations trying to curb it.
When it comes to the spamming of discussion forums, a spammer will join (or post as a guest, if the forum supports it) and bump really old threads or otherwise post in an off-topic manner in order to either disrupt the flow of conversation taking place there, or to advertise something. Many will utilize the forums signature feature to put a link to whatever they're selling, which is then attached to every post they make.
Obviously, spam and SPAM are two different things. The lowercase spam refers to the junk email and junk messages that have been plaguing the internet pretty much since the beginning. SPAM in uppercase refers to the Hormel food product, which by the way, is the state food of Hawaii. Hormel has made it clear that they do not have an issue with their trademarked SPAM being used to describe the epidemic of unsolicited messages, but they have stated that they would prefer that people refer to it using lowercase letters, so as to not infringe on their trademark. There have, however, been situations where Hormel has asked companies to not use the word spam, as in the case of SpamArrest and spambuster.
(Reuters) - Native Americans who often ate processed meat in a can, generically known as "spam" and a common food on reservations, one subsidized by the government -- had a two-fold increased risk of developing diabetes over those who ate little or none, according to a U.S. study. Native Americans are at especially high risk of developing diabetes, with nearly half having the condition by age 55 ...
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Read more...Native Americans who often ate processed meat in a can, generically known as "spam" and a common food on reservations, one subsidized by the government -- had a two-fold increased risk of developing diabetes over those who ate little or none
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Read more...A spam botnet brought down four months ago, which was once capable of pumping out almost four billion spam messages a day, remains very much dead, two of the companies behind the takedown said. That determination, announced late Friday by Microsoft and Kaspersky Lab representatives, contradicted published reports, including one from Ars , that claimed the network of infected computers had been ...
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