Most people don't mind too much the flyers, advertisements and weekly printings they receive in their mailboxes. Some people may actually look forward to receiving offers of credit, foodstuffs and notifications of potential savings. Mass mailings are not new and have been a tried-and-true method of reaching potential customers. Targeting these mailings to the most likely potential consumers is an important part of this process, and can save the advertiser a lot of money in unnecessary postage. But what if the advertiser didn't have to pay all that money or bother targeting their mailings? What if all they had to do was type a message into an e-mail and then send it to a vast collection of addresses?

Enter spam. Spam is recognized as first occurring in 1994 with a message that was cross-posted on about 6,000 Usenet news groups by a law firm offering green cards. The operation was eventually shutdown, and one of the lawyers involved was even disbarred, but the point was made. Spam works. The use of the word "spam" stems from a Monty Python skit in which the troupe chanted the word in the background until it overwhelmed all conversations that were occurring. Unfortunately, this may be a perfect analogy for what this unwanted mail achieves. Spam, while generally just a nuisance, can also amass and become an expense on a business or other enterprise. Machines that are not properly secured can be unwittingly used to forward spam on to others. Spam has also outgrown its somewhat humble beginnings in news groups and is often targeted to a recipient by their unique e-mail address. Simply replying and asking to be removed from their list may actually just confirm the address and put you onto another list to be sold to other marketers. One of the worst things about spam is how easy it is for the offender to deliver his goods. It takes very little time to send mail out to millions, tying up countless resources and network bandwidth. Not checking your mail for a couple of days can lead to your mailbox being filled with garbage while your legitimate mail is lost to overflow. Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad if the products and services being offered had some substance to them, but they all seem to revolve around the enlargement of your sexual organs, pornography, getting rich without actually working and people pretending to know you. The best, of course, are the messages that have no sender, no subject, addresses you by the wrong name, or has your own name as the sender.

Aside from the annoying profit schemes, some spam can be harmful to your computer and your personal information. The security of your system can be compromised by e-mails with harmful attachments, or that are constructed in a malicious manner. It is even possible for someone to gain control of your machine and access all of the input devices, including cameras and microphones, not to mention all of your personal data. For businesses, spam can cost time, money and efficiency. Workers bogged down in junk mail may miss important correspondence. Even worse, volumes of undesired mail and forwarding of the same could bring a company's servers to their knees. If the volume is high enough, all available disk space could be consumed, leaving no room for legitimate items. Complicating this matter is the fact that spammers can make the e-mail they send appear to be coming from someone else. Imagine if someone were to send out a bunch of spam with your e-mail address in the "From" field. Aside from the complaints and hate mail you might receive directly, you could be looking at trouble from your ISP, at least initially. Most people have heard of at least one "super-spammer" getting shut down, but it doesn't seem to take long for another to pop up in its place. This is because spam has a success rate that offsets the negatives. If you were selling tires and could send a message about them out to the entire world, you would be phenomenally successful if only even a tiny percentage of the recipients were interested. Beyond the legitimate advertisers, there are the "get rich quick" schemers. Interestingly, the only people that seem to get rich quick are the ones who start the scheme in the first place.

What can you do to stop spam? Well, the common opinion from the experts is to ignore it. Create filters to sort your incoming mail and manually delete the pieces that you don't want. This is similar to standing over the garbage next to a mailbox. There are also things that you should not do, such as reply to spam or visit the site it's advertising. Writing a nasty response to a received message will most likely be sent to a bogus e-mail address, and even if the spammer does receive the message it will likely only make a target out of you for further attack. Likewise, replying to remove yourself from the spammers' lists may actually only validate your e-mail address and get you added permanently. Once enough spammers have your address, your only course of action may be to dump the e-mail account and get another address. Posting on UseNet groups could also attract large quantities of spam: They are traditionally a spam e-mail-address harvesting ground. Some people go to lengths to add bits of text into their e-mail address to fool the address bots, but this is only partially successful and if not done correctly could actually point at someone else's legitimate address.

Spam is a big issue in this day and age. Businesses and individuals alike are affected by it. Time, money, resources and productivity are all casualties in the war against junk mail. My junk mail folder had 73 items in it since yesterday, with only three new filtered messages that were actually mine. If a prospective employer were to respond to a job resume I had sent I would likely not see the message. The same is true for any number of other important responses. The government has been involved in the issue of spam for some time now and other countries have issues as well. But politicians don't have the best record when it comes to technology related issues, and we can only hope spam won't cost the rest of us even more of our freedom.