Spams

Spam is basically flooding the internet with multiple copies of the same message. It is mainly done with the attempt to force someone to choose to read it, even if he does not want to, and today, spamming has become like a very frequent every day job over the internet. A frequent internet user would come across either spamming of emails and notifications every now and then, such increased is the activity of spamming these days.

Most spam is commercial, which include advertising for dubious products, or claiming to give you an ‘opportunity’ for easy and free earning, and making a queer attempt to make you indulge in activities over the internet which is quasi-illegal. They are a threat as they can be luring lots of innocent internet user into misleading activities. From here comes the need to learn more about spamming and how they can be prevented or reduced from spreading, because stopping a spam is sometimes definitely out of reach.

There are two main types of spams- Cancellable Usenet spam, which s a single message sent to 20 or more Usenet newsgroups. Usenet spam is aimed at “lurkers”, people who read newsgroups but rarely or never post and give their address away.

Another very common form of spamming people is email spam. It targets individual user by sending them direct mail messages using emails id’s from Usenet groups, stealing internet mailing lists, or searching the web for addresses.

Spam is pretty common, specially for advertising because of the sole reason that spamming does not cost anything to the sender but is heavily borne on the receiver.  Anyone with measured phone service, read or receive their mail while the meter is running. So to speak, spam costs them additional money. Moreover, it costs money for ISPs and online services to transmit spam, and these costs are transmitted directly to subscribers. So compressing as to what is spam, anything which is sent in bulk, or any email that is not a part of your subscription or was never asked for, or emails sent from unknown companies or people can be termed and recognized as spam.

The reason why spamming still continues is that not many people are aware of what exactly is spam, and thus the advertisements sent by spammers are very thoroughly read and received well by few ignorant people, and thus this process of spamming never comes to a standstill. Also for the people who are aware of what is a spam, the most common thing is of refraining from using anti-spam software’s and anti spam techniques. This is surely an encouragement for spammers as half the people have no complete information on spam and the other half are just too careless to do anything about it.

For the people who really care about such a thing, there is a list of techniques both at the person and non personal level, which could help reduce and prevent spam online. At the personal level, all you could do is never responding to it, filtering it out of your e-mail, and complaining to providers about it. Sharing an email address only among a limited group of correspondents is one way to limit spam. For this reason, avoid forwarding mails to people whom you do not know, and thus try using the ‘bcc’ tab for forwarding any email in case of emergency and refrain from forwarding mails to other unknown people or group through the ‘to’ tab.

Also try your best to avoid responses to spam. Even reverting to a spammed email saying, “Don’t spam me” will give them an automatic confirmation that this is a valid and an active email id and thus will spam mail you more. Also, no matter how much that junk and spammed email might look convincing and attractive, but it is very important for one to know that only if you stop responding and encouraging will this activity come to a stop.