What is "Spam"?

Introduction

Spam is junk email. While there are several generally compatible definitions of "spam", spam is defined by the SpamAssassin project as Unsolicited Bulk Email (UBE). Email that is not spam is often called ["Ham"]. Another definition, Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE) is not used by the SpamAssassin project because some spam is clearly not commercial and some unsolicited mail which is not bulk is (often) actually wanted.

Spam really began to be a problem in 2002, and has been plaguing internet users ever since. The following graphs show the dramatic rise in spam, and typical spam topics. (Statistics vary from person to person, and from metric to metric, but these statistics from Brightmail, now Symantec, are fairly representative.)

attachment:Spam-stats.jpg

The Origin Of The Name "Spam"

The term "spam" comes from the Monty Python sketch where the name of the canned meat product is used so often that it crowds everything else out.

The word SPAM is actually a registered trademark of [http://www.hormel.com/ Hormel Foods Corporation]. Their [http://www.spam.com/ci/ci_in.htm trademark guidelines] say:
We do not object to use of this slang term to describe UCE, although we do object to the use of the word "spam" as a trademark and to the use of our product image in association with that term.
Also, if the term is to be used, it should be used in all lower-case letters to distinguish it from our trademark SPAM, which should be used with all uppercase letters. We hope that Spam with an uppercase letter S (as in SpamAssassin) is ok, too

Child pages

What is "Spam"?

Introduction

The Origin Of The Name "Spam"

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