Spamming is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages.
Spamming is economically viable because advertisers have no operating costs beyond the management of their mailing lists, and it is difficult to hold senders accountable for their mass mailings. Because the barrier to entry is so low, spammers are numerous, and the volume of unsolicited mail has become very high. The costs, such as lost productivity and fraud, are borne by the public and by Internet service providers, which have been forced to add extra capacity to cope with the deluge. Spamming is widely reviled, and has been the subject of legislation in many jurisdictions.
The people that create electronic spam are called spammers.
E-mail spam
E-mail spam, also known as unsolicited bulk email (UBE) or unsolicited commercial email (UCE), is the practice of sending unwanted e-mail messages, frequently with commercial content, in large quantities to an indiscriminate set of recipients.
Spam in e-mail started to become a problem when the Internet was opened up to the general public in the mid-1990s. It grew exponentially over the following years, and today comprises some 80 to 85% of all the email in the world, by conservative estimate; some sources go as high as 95%.
Pressures to make e-mail spam illegal has been successful in some jurisdictions, but less so in others. Spammers take advantage of this fact, and frequently outsource parts of their operations to countries where spamming will not get them into legal trouble.
Increasingly, e-mail spam today is sent via "zombie networks", networks of virus- or worm-infected personal computers in homes and offices around the globe; many modern worms install a backdoor which allows the spammer access to the computer.
E-mail is an extremely cheap mass medium, and professional spammers have automated their processes to a high extent. Thus, spamming can be very profitable even at what would otherwise be considered extremely low response rates.
An industry of e-mail address harvesting is dedicated to collecting email addresses and selling compiled databases. Millions of email addresses can be cheaply purchased
History
It is widely believed the term spam is derived from the 1970 Monty Python SPAM sketch, set in a cafe where nearly every item on the menu includes SPAM luncheon meat. As the server recites the SPAM-filled menu, a chorus of Viking patrons drowns out all conversations with a song repeating "SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM... lovely SPAM, wonderful SPAM", hence "SPAMming" the dialogue. The excessive amount of SPAM mentioned in the sketch is a reference to British rationing during World War II. SPAM was one of the few meat products that avoided rationing, and hence widely available.
Although the first known instance of unsolicited commercial e-mail occurred in 1978 (unsolicited electronic messaging had already taken place over other media, with the first recorded instance being via telegram in May 1864), the term "spam" for this practice had not yet been applied.
It later came to be used on Usenet to mean excessive multiple posting—the repeated posting of the same message. The unwanted message would appear in many if not all newsgroups, just as SPAM appeared in all the menu items in the Monty Python sketch.
Spamming is economically viable because advertisers have no operating costs beyond the management of their mailing lists, and it is difficult to hold senders accountable for their mass mailings. Because the barrier to entry is so low, spammers are numerous, and the volume of unsolicited mail has become very high. The costs, such as lost productivity and fraud, are borne by the public and by Internet service providers, which have been forced to add extra capacity to cope with the deluge. Spamming is widely reviled, and has been the subject of legislation in many jurisdictions.
The people that create electronic spam are called spammers.
E-mail spam
E-mail spam, also known as unsolicited bulk email (UBE) or unsolicited commercial email (UCE), is the practice of sending unwanted e-mail messages, frequently with commercial content, in large quantities to an indiscriminate set of recipients.
Spam in e-mail started to become a problem when the Internet was opened up to the general public in the mid-1990s. It grew exponentially over the following years, and today comprises some 80 to 85% of all the email in the world, by conservative estimate; some sources go as high as 95%.
Pressures to make e-mail spam illegal has been successful in some jurisdictions, but less so in others. Spammers take advantage of this fact, and frequently outsource parts of their operations to countries where spamming will not get them into legal trouble.
Increasingly, e-mail spam today is sent via "zombie networks", networks of virus- or worm-infected personal computers in homes and offices around the globe; many modern worms install a backdoor which allows the spammer access to the computer.
E-mail is an extremely cheap mass medium, and professional spammers have automated their processes to a high extent. Thus, spamming can be very profitable even at what would otherwise be considered extremely low response rates.
An industry of e-mail address harvesting is dedicated to collecting email addresses and selling compiled databases. Millions of email addresses can be cheaply purchased
History
It is widely believed the term spam is derived from the 1970 Monty Python SPAM sketch, set in a cafe where nearly every item on the menu includes SPAM luncheon meat. As the server recites the SPAM-filled menu, a chorus of Viking patrons drowns out all conversations with a song repeating "SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM... lovely SPAM, wonderful SPAM", hence "SPAMming" the dialogue. The excessive amount of SPAM mentioned in the sketch is a reference to British rationing during World War II. SPAM was one of the few meat products that avoided rationing, and hence widely available.
Although the first known instance of unsolicited commercial e-mail occurred in 1978 (unsolicited electronic messaging had already taken place over other media, with the first recorded instance being via telegram in May 1864), the term "spam" for this practice had not yet been applied.
It later came to be used on Usenet to mean excessive multiple posting—the repeated posting of the same message. The unwanted message would appear in many if not all newsgroups, just as SPAM appeared in all the menu items in the Monty Python sketch.
There are three popular false etymologies of the word "spam". The first is that "spamming" is what happens when one dumps a can of SPAM luncheon meat into a fan blade. The second is the backronym "shit posing as mail." The third is similar, using "stupid pointless annoying messages." Most suitable seems to be the Esperanto interpretation: The term spamo (with the o-ending designating nouns) makes sense as "senpete alsendita mesaĝo", which means "message being sent to someone without being asked for".
In 1998, the New Oxford Dictionary of English, which had previously only defined "spam" in relation to the trademarked food product, added a second definition to its entry for "spam": "Irrelevant or inappropriate messages sent on the Internet to a large number of newsgroups or users
Spam (food)
SPAM luncheon meat is a canned precooked meat product made by the Hormel Foods Corporation. The labelled ingredients in the Classic variety of Spam are: chopped pork shoulder meat with ham meat added, salt, water, sugar, and sodium nitrite to help "keep its color". The product has become part of many jokes and urban legends about mystery meat, which has made it part of pop culture and folklore.
Varieties of Spam vary by region and include Spam Black Pepper, Spam Less Sodium, Spam Garlic, Spam and Cheese, Spam with Bacon (Hormel bacon), Spam Spread, Spam Fritters, Spam Lite (containing pork and chicken), Spam Golden Honey Grail, Spam Hot and Spicy (with Tabasco sauce), Spam Hickory Smoked, and Spam Oven Roasted Turkey - the latter is also available as halal food, meaning that it is permissible under Islamic law, and is especially popular in Muslim markets.
Spam is produced in (among other places) Austin, Minnesota, USA (also known as Spam Town USA). In 2002, the six billionth can of Spam was sold. Spam for the UK market is produced in Denmark by Tulip under licence from Hormel.
Name origin
Introduced on July 5, 1937, the name "Spam" was chosen in the 1930s when the product, whose original name was far less memorable (Hormel Spiced Ham), began to lose market share. The name was chosen from multiple entries in a naming contest. A Hormel official once stated that the original meaning of the name Spam was "Shoulder of Pork and hAM". According to writer Marguerite Patten in Spam – The Cookbook, the name was suggested by Kenneth Daigneau, an actor and the brother of a Hormel vice president. At one time, the official explanation may have been that the name was a syllabic abbreviation of "SPiced hAM", but on their official website, Hormel denies this and states that "Spam is just that. Spam." The fact that the originator was given a $100 prize for coming up with the name, however, still appears on the site's Spam FAQs.
Many jocular backronyms have been devised, such as "Something Posing As Meat" and "Spare Parts Animal Meat." "Special Purpose Army Meat" has been suggested as another apocryphal backronym referring to the product's WWII roots.
According to Hormel's trademark guidelines, Spam should be spelled with all capital letters and treated as an adjective, as in the phrase "SPAM luncheon meat". As with many other trademarks, such as Xerox or Kleenex, people often refer to similar meat products as "spam".
Regardless, in practice, "spam" is generally spelled and used as a proper noun.
Source: Wikipedia
Source: aphexnon3 (You Tube) Key words: monty python spam subtitles
Here's the famous sketch all about the tinned meat.
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