What is Spam? Definition, Origin and Types of Messages

Every Internet user knows the word 'spam' and sees it in their inbox quite often. But not everyone knows that years ago the word “spam” had nothing to do with the Internet or emails.

Spam translation: ‘Spam’ is an acronym derived from the English words spicy (spicy) and ham (sausage).

What Spam Means: Source

In 1937, Hormel Foods Corporation (USA) began selling minced sausages made from expired meat. Americans refused to buy this unappetizing product.

To avoid financial loss, the owner of the company, Mr. Hormel, launched a campaign massive publicity that resulted in a contract to supply corned beef products to the Army and the Marine.

In 1937, Hormel Foods began supplying its products to American and Allied troops. After World War II, with Britain facing an economic crisis, “spam” was one of the few meat products that was not rationed and therefore widely available.

George Orwell, in his book “1984”, described spam as “pink pieces of meat”, which gave new meaning to the word “spam” – something disgusting, but inevitable.

In December 1970, the BBC television comedy series 'Monty Python's Flying Circus' showed a menu in a cafe where almost every item on the menu included spam - the controversial corned beef.

As the waiter recited the SPAM-filled menu, a chorus of Viking diners drowned out all other conversations with a song repeating “SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM… lovely SPAM, wonderful SPAM”.

Since then, spam has been associated with unwanted, intrusive, and excessive information that suppresses necessary messages.

Spam in electronic media

In 1993, the term 'spam' was first introduced to refer to unsolicited or unwanted bulk electronic messages.

Richard Dephew, administrator of the worldwide Usenet discussion system, wrote a program that mistakenly caused dozens of unwanted messages to be released. Recipients immediately found an appropriate name for these intrusive messages – spam.

On April 12, 1994, a law firm called Canter & Siegel published the first massive spam email. The company's programmer used Usenet to advertise services offered by Canter & Siegel, thus starting commercial spam.

Today, the word 'spam' is widely used in email terminology, even though Hormel's canned meat products are still for sale in the US.

what is spam box

Before we define exactly what is spam, a few words should be said about spam in general and how it is understood in other countries.

Depending on the purposes of the sender (spammer), spam (unsolicited bulk email) may contain commercial information or have nothing to do with it.

In other words, according to the message content, spam is divided into unsolicited commercial email (UCE) and unsolicited bulk email (UBE).

An email can contain information about its content in the field SUBJECT, while in the body of the message a sender can explain why he treats a recipient without asking for permission and what the recipient must do to not receive emails from the sender in the future.

In other words, if a user wants to unsubscribe from unsolicited emails, they must follow the sender's instructions of spam, which will usually require information about the user's email address or the need to call a number telephone.

Spammers know they are sending unsolicited information and try to make it look like they don't want to bother the user through the clever use of SUBJECT field text and the inclusion of an unsubscribe mechanism. signature.

In fact, spammers do not care about reducing the inconvenience caused by spam and, moreover, avoid responsibility for your actions using spoofed sender addresses, third-party addresses or message headers false.

Its sole purpose is to prevent identification of the sender and thus prevent any possible retribution.

what is spam

According to Kaspersky Lab, the definition of spam is unsolicited and anonymous bulk email.

Let's take a look at each component of the definition:

• Anonymous: real spam is sent with spoofed or harvested sender addresses to hide the real sender.
• Bulk shipments: real spam is sent in massive amounts. Spammers make money from the small percentage of recipients who actually respond, so for spam to be cost effective, initial emails need to be high volume.
• Unsolicited: mailing lists, newsletters, and other advertising materials that end users have opted in to receive may resemble spam but are, in fact, legitimate messages.

In other words, the same piece of correspondence can be classified as both spam and legitimate mail, depending on whether or not the user has chosen to receive it.

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