Spam is undesired content and in most cases malicious. Spam can be referred as to any content, for example, on a website open to comments by visitors, malicious users can insert advertising messages or links to other sites with potentially dangerous content. However, usually, when someone refers to spam without further clarification, they mean email spam. In this article, we refer therefore to spam on email.
Spamming is the act of sending unsolicited and unauthorized emails containing advertising or other unwanted content. It is a crime and has the immediate effect of producing the jamming in the mailboxes of the users who receive mail. Today spam is illegal in most countries of the world, and while some do not have specific laws which speak about email, they have laws that apply to abuses or harassments on which spam can be punished under such regulations.
Today most Spam is mainly submitted by criminal organizations engaged in illicit activities. Spam tends to be send in large quantities automatically. Usually by computer programs known as bots or robots, mostly being a virus, where the owner of the infected computer is unaware that thousands of spam mails are being sent every day from his computer system which is infected with malware. Most typical spam email is pornographic content, links to frauds or other malware that attempt to infect new users to increase the network of computers that send spam worldwide.
Most of the spam is, therefore, links to fraudulent websites, scams or contain malicious files infected with malware. Another minor part of the spam is sent by users or companies that do not have knowledge of perceiving the difference between commercial mail and spam. Alternatively, are tricked by supposed email marketing companies that send their massive messages for them, severely damaging the online reputation of the business, as now it is associated with this despicable activity. That person is cataloged as a Spammer.
Spam costs money.
Spam floods the Internet with multiple copies of the same message, in an attempt to force people to read the message that otherwise would not have opted to receive it. Most Spam is commercial advertising, most of the times about doubtful products, scams to earn money or services that infringe the law. Spam costs little money to the sender, and most of the expenses are paid by the receiver of the message.
Spam costs money to the receivers, mostly to companies with a large number of users since each spam message uses a quota of space on the accounts, consumes computing resources while processing them in filters, and eat bandwidth. However, mostly they cost time to the recipient who must analyze and read the message just to discard it. In the case of frauds or viruses, Spam can be very costly if it achieves its desired end goal. Although these computational costs may appear minimal for a single email message, for an organization with multiple users which receive thousands of spam emails per day, the cost of receiving spam can be quickly calculated, as well as the time of productivity lost by employees who must deal daily with them in their mailboxes.
Spam that appears not to be Spam.
There are several types of Spam, each which has different effects on Internet users. Cancellable Spams are messages sent just once to various users in a direct way. Spammers often steal the addresses of websites or other mailing lists promoting the fact that users can unsubscribe from future messages. Many times they even place text that such email cannot be considered Spam as the user has the option of being removed. Simply receiving an unsolicited message, a single time is considered Spam and the fact of placing such message is no excuse.
A particular and malicious way is to send Spam through massive e-mail lists, whether they are public or private. Spammers often use programs installed on servers to perform mass-mailing or use valid lists to force the sending to users.
Why is Spam malicious?
The reason why users get so angry when they receive unsolicited messages has several reasons, but here are some sufficiently valid reasons:
1. The free trip.
Spam e-mail is very unique because the receiver pays much more than the sender. A concrete example, AOL published that they received 1,8 million spam messages per day from Cyber Promotions until they managed to stop them through a legal court order.
Assuming the typical user of AOL just takes 10 seconds to identify and delete a Spam mail, this is equivalent to 5,000 hours per day of connection just to eliminate Spam, and this is just for AOL. In contrast, the spammer probably has a low-cost Internet connection which only costs a few dollars a day or is using a third party connection without permission.
2. The ocean of spam problem.
A lot of Spam messages publish in their messages “Please reply to be REMOVED from our mailing list”. Just dismissing the question of why we should take our valuable time to eliminate ourselves from a mailing list which we never agreed to enter, this is entirely impossible and ridiculous.
Currently, most of us receive every day some Spam. Imagine that just 1/10 of 1% of the Internet users decides to send Spam in a moderate rate of 100,000 e-mails per day, something that can already be achieved with only a dial-up Internet access connection.
Then we would get 100 Spams per day. If 1% of users Spam at this rate, we would receive 1,000 Spam messages per day.
Is it reasonable to request people to send 100 messages of "remove me" every single day? Hardly. If Spam grows, it saturates our email boxes to the point that they do not serve anymore for legitimate email communications.
3. Spam deceives.
Spammers frequently change web addresses, web domain or hosting providers to avoid detection. Often they buy an account for Spam until detected, usually with stolen credit cards or even accepting the charges. Spammers do not show their real identity to avoid identification and tend to deceive users about how to remove themselves from a mailing list, or make it very complicated. Spammers always hide the origin of their messages, as well as the identity of the person who sends them to avoid legal actions. Products offered in Spam messages are the most uncertain since Spammers are using this medium to avoid spending or investing in conventional advertising media. Any product or service offered via Spam is probably a fraud and results in a terrible marketing image for the company or product provided, causing users to hate it instead.
4. Spam generates millions of dollars in damage.
If a spammer decides to send 1 million emails on a server with legitimate mail users, it would probably crash the server or generate congestion to the point where a single valid e-mail message would take days to be delivered. This causes tremendous costs for the system administrators which must clean the disaster caused by the Spammer during hours, without mentioning the costs of use of the traffic and the legitimate users that have their mails affected by the Spammer.
The spammer is a common criminal since it causes economic damage to other people. Even worse, a mail server or network affected by Spam emissions results in outgoing messages blocked by other email servers on the Internet. This leads to the loss of any messages send from such servers causing direct damages on the business operations of legitimate email users.
5. The vilest medium of marketing.
What form of marketing more evil than forcing someone to read about a product which they have no interest?
Spammers are intrusive, run over against everything without respect for society in general and only pursuing their selfish purpose. They base their tactic that only a minimum percentage will be interested in the product, so they send the advertising to as many people as they can, without actually caring if those people are interested or not in the information.
For example, over 100,000 Spam mails send, they assume that only 1% of recipients could show interest, around 1,000 users. What about the other 99,000 users? They do not care of course!
Spammer forces us to read and spend our time on something that does not interest us. Imagine if you receive 100 Spam messages per day how many minutes it costs you every year. Time is precious because you cannot recover it. Even if it is only 5 minutes a day.
Can you compare this to receiving similar advertising in other forms?
Imagine receiving 25 phone calls with service offerings per day in your office. Other 30 promotional SMS’s on your mobile phone and then 10 printed brochures with different products at your home door. Every single day! How would you feel? Probably annoyed and harassed. The same way in which people feel that must continually change email accounts, because of the number of garbage messages they receive every day.
Spammers do not respect the privacy of individuals, are intrusive, create unnecessary economic costs, and most likely are criminals in their countries. Anyone who receives tons of spam per day has a repudiation against spammers and knows the value of time.
Netz0 has a zero tolerance policy for spam. Our network is continuously monitored and patrolled by automated systems and people who perform manual controls on all services. We do not allow any type of activity similar to Spam in any product. We have strict regulations for sending mass messages or mailing lists, so they comply with all commercial and legal regulations. Additionally, for mail users, we have powerful antispam filters that stop great amounts of incoming trash mail, and we also have corporate filters with zero spam guarantees for clean mailboxes every day, even for the most spam attacked domains and email accounts.