Being a spammer and abusing the Internet

Let’s face it, no one likes getting post spam, but getting the same amount of spam in your email inbox is even more annoying. Spam is unsolicited emails that you usually receive with the intention of selling you something or generally trying to scam you out of your hard-earned money.

The other thing about spam is that it’s never sent to you manually: there’s no one guy sitting somewhere sending one email at a time. Nerd. Spam is sent in bulk by software programs that typically send this junk in batches of about 1 million emails at a time.

It’s bad enough that much of the spam you receive isn’t very good in terms of its content. No. What’s worse is that these crooks don’t even have to pay the cost of a stamp to send you an email. It is quite free for them to do this. Spammers do have some costs, but compared to the amount of cash some of these idiots make, the costs are very small.

So why do you hate spam so much? Most people hate the daily task of having to delete some annoying emails. Or have your antivirus program kick in and complain that there’s a Trojan virus hiding in that last piece of spam. That’s enough, but when you start getting 100 or 200 pieces of spam every day, it means you’re spending many hours every week cleaning up this mess.

In the early days of the Internet, before we all used email as much as we do now, spam was mostly confined to USENET groups, newsgroups that were established to discuss specific issues and problems. As that process progressed, it became possible for people to cross-post or post to multiple groups.

Once people started cross-posting, spammers took advantage of that process. They quickly learned that the same message could be sent to thousands of newsgroups regardless of their interests or the topic of discussion. When email started to gain popularity, spammers discovered that it was a whole new way to develop a new audience for whatever junk product or service they were promoting.

As spam started to increase, we had a new problem: spambots were born. These are programs used to harvest emails to be compiled into lists to spam individuals or very large groups of people.

While most of you are fed up with the amount of spam we receive, for the spammer there is a good return on the spam they send out in terms of cash. Some emails that you consider to be spam are actually known as ‘shotgun’ advertising. This is targeted advertising sent only to people who appear to have a valid interest in the product or service being offered. Email addresses are usually acquired in a “legitimate” way: you filled out a form on a website somewhere.

But most spam is the other nasty kind, and while most people won’t fall for the ridiculous merchandise or get-rich-quick scheme promoted in the email, there is one person who will provide a credit card number or other information that provides the spammer with a solid reward. In this case, the spammers’ efforts are rewarded.

Although it seems that spammers can get away with it without us having a say in the matter, the reality is that much effort is being made to combat spam. Government, tech officials, business and trade groups are forging an alliance to figure out how to combat spam and make it something we talk about in the past tense. While the issue may never be 100% resolved, there are now legal tools and procedures to help all of us address this issue.