Spam, unsolicited bulk advertising via email made its first appearance in the mid of 90s, i.e. as soon as lot of people were using email to make this a cost-effective form of advertising. By 1997, spam was considered as being a problem, and the first Real-Time Black List (RBL) appeared in the same year. Spammer techniques have developed in response to the appearance of more and better filters. As soon as security firms evolve effective filters, spammers change their tactics to avoid the new spam blockers. And it leads to a vicious circle, with spammers re-investing profits into developing new techniques to evade new spam filters. The situation is going out of control. In order to combat spam effectively it is essential to define exactly what spam is. Many people believe that spam is unsolicited email. However, this definition is not entirely correct. Spam is an anonymous, unsolicited bulk email.
Definition of spam in detail:
Anonymous real spam is sent with spoofed or harvested sender addresses to hide the actual sender. Real spam is sent in mass quantities. Spammers create money from the small percentage of recipients that actually respond, so for spam to be cost-effective, the initial mails have to be high-volume. Unsolicited mailing lists, newsletters and other advertising materials that end users have chosen to receive may resemble spam but are actually legitimate mail. In other words, the same piece of mail can be classed both as spam and legitimate mail depending on whether or not the user elected to receive it. It must be highlighted that the words 'advertising' and 'commercial' are not used to define spam. Many spam messages dont even advertise nor carry any type of commercial proposition. In addition to offering goods and services, spam mailings can be categorized into the following kinds. Political messages, Quasi-charity appeals, financial scams, Chain letters, Fake spam, Unsolicited but legitimate messages are the kinds. A legitimate commercial proposition, a charity appeal, an invitation addressed personally to an existing receiver or a newsletter can certainly be defined as unsolicited mail, but not as spam. Legitimate messages may also include delivery failure messages, misdirected messages, messages from system administrators or even messages from old friends who have earlier not corresponded with the recipient by email.
Conclusion:
Because unsolicited correspondence may be of interest to the recipient, a quality anti spam solution should be competent to distinguish between true spam i.e., unsolicited, bulk mailing and unsolicited correspondence. This kind of mail should be flagged as 'possible spam' so it can be reviewed or deleted at the recipient's comfort. Companies should have a spam guiding principle, with system administrators assessing the requirements of different departments. Access to different unsolicited mail folders should be given to different user groups support on this assessment. For instance, the travel manager may well want to read travel ads, whereas the HR department may wish to see all invitations to seminars and training sessions. At present, spammers usually use the last three methods in a variety of combinations. Many anti spam solutions are incompetent of detecting all. As long as spamming remains money-making, users with poor-quality anti spam software will continue to find their mailboxes clogged with advertising. So the above information tells us about spam and in brief its purposes.