Have you ever noticed your mailbox filled with emails you have no relevance with? Like information about pharmacies, unwanted products, or some princesses who want to invest money from another country. If you want to have awareness about what kind of emails are these, read this article. Let us know ‘Spam Email’.
Spam Email
Such emails are known as Spam or Junk emails and refer to unexpected email messages that are usually sent via bulk emails to large number of recipients. Such email is mostly sent by botnet that is a network of computer. It is rarely sent by real humans. Email spam senders constantly change their methods and techniques to trick potential victims into sending money, sharing data, or malware. Spam emails are annoying because they are unwanted items in your emails that are often irrelevant, and everybody wants to know the tips to avoid them. If you want to know more about what spam is, how to recognize it, and how to protect yourself against it, this article can help you.
Spam definition
Spam is a kind of unexpected or irrelevant digital communication that is sent in bulk. It is either sent via email or can also be sent via phone call or text message. A brief history of spam People might think that spam is a problem of modern times but it has a history of several decades. Gray Thuerk who was the employee of the now-defunct Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC) known to be the first person who sent first spam in 1978. The first spam was sent to about 2600 recipients who had email accounts on the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network.
According to reports it generated about $12 million leads.The term spam was never used until 1993. The word was first used on Usenet, which was a newsgroup that was considered a hybrid between an email and web forum. Once a glitch in its moderation software automatically posted 200-plus messages to a discussion group and someone named it Spamming after which this term is been used for any email or message that is unwanted for its recipient. After this event, it started spreading as it was a good idea for marketing. With the passage of time it became such a widespread problem that it compelled the U.S. legislation to pass an act named as “Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) in 2003 which is still implemented since 2003.
Types of spam
Spammers use several techniques to reach out to listed recipients they have and send them unwanted messages. Some messages are related to the marketing of unwanted goods, some are tricky messages to get your information, spread malware, or pay for the parcel you never ordered. Some email spam filters can help you catch these types of emails, but some spam messages do get through these filters. Below is some basic information, types and techniques used by spammers. If you are aware of these types, you might be able to recognize them.
The most popular spam subjects include:
* Online degrees
* Work from home jobs
* Adult content
* Financial services
* cryptocurrencies
* Online gambling
* Pharmaceuticals
* Common spamming techniques
Forms of Email Spam
Email spam would come in many ways depending upon the purpose of sending it. Marketing messages. This type includes the marketing of illegal or unwanted items.
Malware messages: These are the emails that can trick you to share your personal information, paying money, or taking some action that, you would not like to attempt normally.
Frauds and scams: In such emails, you will be given an offer to invest your money in some business offer and to win a huge reward in return.
Antivirus warnings: Such messages would warn you about a virus and provides a solution to fix it. If you accept the request to fix the virus the hacker can gain access to your system.
Sweepstakes winners: This type includes emails in which the recipient is informed that he/she has won a prize and to collect the prize the receipt must click the link which is typically used to gather the user’s personal information.
Techniques used by spammer to send emails includes
Botnets
Botnets are a technique that allows spammers to use command-and-control servers to send bulk spam.
Snowshoe spam
With this technique, spammers use a wide range of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses to send spam widely.
Image spam
These are computer-generated emails. They are usually in JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) or GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) file format. Filters cannot detect such spam.
Spam may also come in the form of phishing emails
Phishing messages are usually designed emails from legitimate senders, like banks, government agencies, and organization. These emails are the fake version of actual organizations. Via these emails, you will be asked to enter login credentials or credit card details so that they would steal your money by using the given information.
How to fight spam?
Email spam filters can catch many spam messages, moving them to the spam folder rather than the inbox. However, it is not possible to avoid spam.
However, users can minimize the vulnerability to spam emails by considering the following steps:
Reporting, blocking, and deleting spam.
-To add antispam filters.
-To Customize the spam filter to block messages which include particular words or subjects that frequently appear in spam emails.
– Producing a separate list for the IP addresses or domains of the users, you only want to receive emails from.
-To use a masked email address for online use so that one’s email address remains unseen to spammers.
-Avoid clicking on links in emails sent from unknown senders.
It is a known notion that Spam emails are annoying because they contain offers which are not relevant and they have a tendency to waste your time and money. This is the reason for which everyone wants to know the ways to get rid of them. But in this era of digital marketing, it is not possible to fully avoid spam emails. One can take precautional steps to avoid them which are mentioned in this article and would save their time and money.
