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I couldn't understand a lot of the article terms. It is not written for non-tech people and therefore is not enlightening. Think of a 70 year old woman with only basic computer knowledge and write for her. It will help keep it clear and actually communicative. 78.86.144.98 ( talk) 18:16, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
This is a moderately complicated topic technically, and can get very complicated (and flamy) socially. Some things that it might be useful to cover in the future, within the purview of email spamming along, include:
Within the purview of Usenet spamming, it might do to have more on the subject of sporgery (touching perhaps on Hipcrime) as well as the Cancelmoose and NoCeM systems. -- FOo
Elvey 01:35, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
This article takes a strong stand against spam. Believe me, I sympathize, but we need to rework it so that it presents the issues from a neutral point of view -- Stephen Gilbert 16:05 Jan 10, 2003 (UTC)
I think it would be very difficult to present a neutral point of view on spam. It's difficult to do this with many issues including child porn or other things most of society frowns on.
I personally think we need to put more pressure on our legislators. I believe the reason spamming is not being legislated properly is because we have not made enough of a fuss with our legislators. The legal definition of spam needs to be changed. Right now if they have a place you can "unsubscribe" from the email it isn't considered spam. The legal definition should be "Any unsolicited mail from any company that does not have your invitation to send you mailing." Right now they can send you what you may view as spam if they have or have had a "business relationship" with you. We need something akin to the no call list. And we should also penalize countries that allow spam by putting import duties on their products. That would stop or at least slow them down. Spammers are in my view on the same level as most selfish people. The same type of people who would sell their kids for drug money. I think a proper punishment would be that spammers are put in prison cells and their spam printed out and put in their cells. Perhaps if their lives were complicated by the spam they create it might impact their behavior. I also think that big business likes spam or it wouldn't exist. I'd love to see the stocks brought back for spammers (wouldn't it be nice to be able to go from 7am to 7pm and pelt them with balls made from their spam???) But until we make spam economically unprofitable it will continue. 75.171.175.153 ( talk) 00:17, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
If anyone wants to do some detective-work on the spammer's POV, here's a list of spammer web forums. -- Khym Chanur 11:32, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)
I'd say one step towards NPOV would be to address these points:
1. Since contact information is frequently false or misleading, why do people advertise with spam?
Anecdotal evidence I've seen points to the conclusion that the money in spam is not made by the person or company who is advertised (let's call him the customer), but by the spammer. A customer will either pay so much for each contact made because of a spam run, which works out to a profit for the spammer of a few thousand dollars for a run (before the cost of the account, & appreciation for the hardware, & labor); or the customer pays a flat fee for the run. In either case, the spammer has no interest in "cleaning" her/his list of addresses; the time saved by reducing the total number of addressees is considered less than the time spent cleaning the list of inactive accounts & people who are not interested.
2. Arguments for spam (they actually do exist!):
I'd add this material to the main article, but I'm writing this all from memory, & don't have any references available. -- llywrch 20:03, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Has anyone *ever* received a spam message like the one added to the page by User:24.159.246.142? I haven't, and I think the statement "most spam blockers can't stop this" is also wrong. If there are no objections, I'll rollback his edits. -- Schnee 22:32, 18 Oct 2003 (UTC)
/\S[A-Za-z]<!--.*-->[A-Za-z]\S/
I removed this for being non-npov: The fact that spam is usually contains very boorish language evidently written by persons lacking the mental capacity to grasp the concept of politeness or spelling or grammatical sentences also contributes to the low esteem in which spammers are held.
and this as I don't think it's true: (By and large, senders of email advertisements each assert that what they do is not spamming.) Often the rationale for such assertions is a dishonest statement that the recipient has "opted in", i.e., solicited bulk mailings from the sender. Angela
Isn't it more appropriate for SPAM to redirect to this article referring to unwarranted mail first? There are many out there (esp. outside US), who have no idea that there is actually a product called SPAM, but any internet user knows what Spamming is. I feel there can be a disambiguation on top of the spamming page that can take care of the product (and the other meanings). Spamming is more well-researched than SPAM anyway.
It is not that I dont see the reason why it is organised as it is now (considering that all-caps SPAM should refer to the product and all), but I still feel it is better, if the article and the disambiguation is organised the other way around. (At least to me, until about a little while ago, the word spam had only one invidious meaning) chance 13:33, Dec 3, 2003 (UTC)
Moved to
Spam (e-mail). A gerund is not a good name for a page title.
Vacuum 23:27, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)
I added a bit on how to stop Messenger spam. Is that in the right place? Did I do this right? (I'm quite new here!). Should I even open a new topic or something like that? -- there_is_no_spoon 18:35, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Someone just added "This kind of spam is very easy to switch off: just click on Start, Run and enter "cmd.exe"." Does this have to be done on every boot, or does windows "memorise" this. If it has to be done every time, then it doesn't qualify as "easy". - snoyes 18:31, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)
OK, I've just changed it
Please let me know what you think of it
--
there_is_no_spoon 20:11, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Do you think that we need manual for turning off MS Windows NET SEND feature here? Let us add how to turn unix talk service etc. I opt for removal of this short manual. It is OT here, since we speak about spam in general. saigon_from_europe (soory for being unlogged)
Shouldn't spam (e-mail) simply be a redirect to Unsolicited Commercial Email?
And while we're at it, shouldn't the Etymolgy section in spamming be in the spam (e-mail) article regardless of the redirect issue? Rick Block 18:54, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Considering how these articles have become a series, I think perhaps the Spam (e-mail) article should be retitled E-mail spam to match the others ( Newsgroup spam, Messaging spam, Blog spam, etc.). Any objections? -- FOo 02:51, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
Finite Monkeys is a blog which collects poetry made from phrases taken from spam messages. -- Jim Regan 03:22, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
We need to mention some successful (and may be not successful) lawsuits against spammers. Here is one recent article on Canadian spammer sued by Yahoo!, for example. http://securitypipeline.com/trends/trends_archive/21800338 (more: http://slashdot.org/articles/04/06/15/1341227.shtml?tid=111&tid=126 http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/2629431 http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/spam/story/0,13427,1239323,00.html) A Russian SMS spammer was also sued recently for sending 15000 SMS with expletives using a Perl script. An article in the criminal code against malware was used. He got a 1-year probational sentence and 100$ fine. Paranoid 18:26, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)
We might need to tell a bit more about spam filtering. There are currently articles on Bayesian filtering, Bayesian inference, SpamAssassin, Stopping e-mail abuse and Spam (e-mail), of course). Paranoid 18:26, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)
There should be a section on what the point of spam is. Lately, a lot of it hasn't been commercial - you get an commercial-sounding phrase in the FROM and SUBJECT fields, and unprofitable gibberish in the body. I think spam is becoming focused on annoyance and denial of service. Anyone know enough to make a section?
-- Aniboy2000 22:13, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Some of that will be E-mail worm infection attempts. Curiously, much of the motivation for many of the most recent worm/virus attempts is to create botnets for sending yet more commercial spam. Remember, they don't care how much they annoy you, and they don't care if they destroy the goose that lays the golden eggs, providing they can make a short-term profit, no matter how small. -- The Anome 23:02, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
What's the point of Spam?
Spam makes up for 14.5 billion emails sent everyday around the word. That means on average almost half of the emails we receive each day are spam! More surprisingly, the U.S. is the nation that generates the most spam, while South Korea takes second place.
So, if you're still wondering, so what's the point? Spam is a money making scheme, it also allows advertisers to take out the middle man and directly advertise in your inbox, and it also gives a avenue for fraudsters who are after your identity, credit card number, and banking information. In fact, identity theft mail (i.e. spammers wanting to use your identity and personal information, which also known as phishing) accounted for 73 percent of all spam mail! S.Tarikh 16:02, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
I agree - the article should make it much more explicit why there is so much spam and the numerous reasons for it. Profit is only one and doesn't explain spams enormous hold over the web. Maliciousness is also a reason and power - to infiltrate people's systems.
78.86.144.98 (
talk)
18:07, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
This article discusses spamming in all media. There are several other articles discussing spamming in specific media, e.g. Newsgroup spam and Spam (e-mail). The specific articles are intended to deal with the technical and social aspects of spamming in those specific media; Spamming is an overview. These are not duplicates and do not need to be merged together. -- FOo 05:41, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Seems ODP: Computers/Internet/Abuse/Spam is a good place for this article ...
Wikipedia - Spamming - Provides a general overview of the spamming phenomenon. Links to articles which discuss the techniques of spammers on particular media: Internet e-mail, instant messaging, Usenet newsgroups, Web search engines, weblogs, and mobile phone messaging. Another article describes ways of stopping e-mail abuse
-- sabre23t 14:35, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I realise that the term has changes over the years. Used to "SPAM" was a verb (in a sense), now it's "spamming." Shouldn't there be some sort of etymology? My understanding for the past ten years has been that SPAM stood for "send(ing) people annoying mail/messages" (there is dispute as to which was the original). Am I the only one that remembers this usage? Dustin Asby 10:18, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I've always known it as "Stupid, pointless, annoying messages". User:Computer Jones
Hi. I moved this article to its present name because of the general Wikipedia convention that gerunds should not be used in article names. Thanks, Vacuum 03:27, Oct 22, 2004 (UTC)
This quote is from the fourth (4th) section of the article "The most prominent Russian spammer ... sparked a powerful anti-spam movement, enraged the deputy minister of communications Andrey Korotkov and provoked a wave of meat-space counter-strikes."
What in the world is meat-space? It fits nicely with SPAM, though I wonder if it is a typo for meta-space. Is it important enough to have its own article?
I just removed the following para:
This was basically a self-promoting claim made by Microsoft folks to tout their "awareness" of the spam issue and, thus, their proprietary anti-spam "solution". As self-promotion, it is therefore not appropriate to Wikipedia.
Moreover, it's not clear to me that the fact of the matter is accessible to us, or to Gates for that matter. He may feel like the most spammed person, but neither he nor Wikipedia has access to a list of all the world's email addresses and the amount of spam they receive. (Nor, for that matter, do we have access to his mail server logs.) There's thus no way to confirm his claim. -- FOo 21:10, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The links in the "Types of spam" section duplicate not only those in the intro para, but also those in the Spamming series box at the bottom. -- FOo 13:30, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I notice there's a certain amount of duplication of links between the "See also" list, and the spam infobox (and there was even before I added the list of different kinds of spam, after accidentally discovering that the links in the introductory paragraph were to the different kinds of spam, and not to the topic of the words that were linked - something which was not at all abvious, and actually sort of against the grain of usual practise in Wikipedia - y'all might want to change that). Anyway, about the duplication: I would say that it's probably a good idea to leave them in both places - I certainly didn't notice the info-box for quite a while, and went straight to the "see also" section for more links. Noel (talk) 13:36, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
It is quite well-attested that the term "spam" was first used in this sense to refer to flooding behavior on MUDs, and that the MUD people got it from Monty Python. The references backing this claim up are already in the article. See, e.g., Brad Templeton's page on the subject: http://www.templetons.com/brad/spamterm.html -- FOo 14:41, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Given that no unequivocal proof has (or can be?) given that it derives from Monty Python, then a caveat must (forever?) remain. However, how on earth has someone arrived at the "false etymologies". Nothing has really been offered by way of solid refutation. The whole section reads like "I personally really like the Monty Python idea and wish to think the rest are all rubbish". POV & painfully so.
This sections reads like someone's favourite folk-etymology rendered without caveats. If there is no clear irrefutable proof that the term derived from Monty Python, then the article should steer well clear of making a mockery of Wikipedia by dessiminating inconclusive notions as hard fact.
92.8.147.86 (
talk)
11:23, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
Removed from the article (actual address redacted):
Unless we have verification from the owner of the posted address, we should not be posting it here at all. Moreover, Wikipedia is not a how-to (e.g. "how to report spam") -- it is an encyclopedia. -- FOo 06:36, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Removed from the article:
In the sense considered by this article, this is not really spam in anything other than metaphor. The paragraph is also chatty (refers to the reader as "you") and the topic might better fit in Spam (e-mail) or an article dealing with business e-mail. However what it is describing sounds to me more like simple improper or rude use of business e-mail. -- FOo 06:27, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I heard that the food item SPAM was sent to soldiers during World War II. Also, This leads me to believe that electronic spam is analogus to that somehow.
Since people were fed SPAM during WWII, I also believe that the feeding of those people was random just like electronic spam. If anybody can give any evidence on whether that caused the term spam to become a term for unsolicited ads on the Internet, type a description about it in the Spam (electionic) article. -- SuperDude 18:42, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Hi, I am working to encourage implementation of the goals of the Wikipedia:Verifiability policy. Part of that is to make sure articles cite their sources. This is particularly important for featured articles, since they are a prominent part of Wikipedia. The Fact and Reference Check Project has more information. If some of the external links are reliable sources and were used as references, they can be placed in a References section too. See the cite sources link for how to format them. Thank you, and please leave me a message when a few references have been added to the article. - Taxman 19:41, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)
Does anybody know anything about this online address book company? What is their record as far as keeping information confidential? -- User:Chinasaur
If I had a "friend" that turned over my email address to someone else 2 things would happen. That "friend" would get an email or call from me and might no longer have the privilege of being a friend with my email address and 2 the "someone else" would also get an email from me, be reported and then would find themselves blocked. When I get unsolicited emails I write asking where they got my email address. If I get the info requested nothing more happens other then they are blocked. If I don't get the info I block further emails from them after reporting them to their ISP. I will not tolerate any spam and spam is anything that I don't request. And I further will not buy from a spammer (I don't care if it's a gallon of gasoline for a penny). You want me to buy from you then use ethical means of advertising and I will find you. [Charli] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.171.175.153 ( talk) 23:57, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
How did an article with such a long name become featured? Ratification 00:57, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
Spam has these three qualities:
Everything meeting the requirements is spam.
—
— Ŭalabio‽ 2005-07-04 01:25:48 (UTC)
― “And postin’ ‘¡Me too!’ like some brain-dead AOL-er”
― “I should do the world a favor and cap you like Old Yeller”
― “You’re just about as useless as jpegs to Helen Keller”
—
Weird Al Yankovic
If you ever write to me offline, please keep what happened to Old Yeller in mind before metooing me like a brain-dead AOLer. ;-)
The first phase of the Nigerian spam when the scamming spammer sends out millions of emails is fully automated. The handling of the greedy stupid gullible people who respond is a manual procedure — those idiots must be as stupid as Shrubya.
—
— Ŭalabio‽ 2005-07-04 17:56:27 (UTC)
I'll watch the news and press agencies, and make sure that this article will reflect what has really happened.
Help is appreciated, but note that Wikipedia is not a discussion forum, so messages like "it's good/bad that this happened" don't belong here. Shinobu 19:29, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
Lynching moved to E-mail spam.
I removed the pro-spam link for now - although not because it's pro-spam.
Apart from that I wonder what the added value of this link is. An intelligent pro-spam essay would be nice to have. However, considering his arguments, and the way he presents them ("Lie #1! Lie #2!" - very reminiscent of some other essays...) I don't think this is the one. Of course I won't stop people from putting it back, as long as points 1 & 2 are given due consideration. Shinobu 21:24, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
"(even goes so far as to say that it's not true most people don't like it)"
That statement is likely made due to the fact that people tend to subscribe to large amounts of "newsletters", "special offer" lists, and things of that nature, which results in them receiving LEGITMATE follow-up emails from the owners of the list(s), which they incorrectly perceive to be spam, when in actuality they had previously instantiated a relationship with the list owner or company.
Anonymous editor 70.20.8.208 added the following comment below the Forum spam section today: — Aapo Laitinen 21:32, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Question: Clicked on Postboosting and found no information just a notice saying "Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. Please search for Postboosting in Wikipedia to check for alternative titles or spellings." What is Postboosting? 00:11, 6 July 2008 (UTC)Charli —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
75.171.175.153 (
talk)
The article says that spam is mass messaging, however I disagree. I believe that you could receive a single message that could be considered spam. -- Hm2k 20:25, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
In addition to this spam is not labelled by the sender, but by the receiver. The receiver is more often than not unaware of whether the message has been received by others. Hm2k 02:34, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
One old definition on Usenet was "the same post many times". The tunable parameters there are "same" (what counts as "the same"?) and "many" (how many times is "many"?) However, in the email world, a standard definition is "unsolicited bulk email" (UBE). Here, the parameters are "unsolicited" (what counts as an "opt-in"?) and "bulk" (again, how many copies?) Usually, an individual sending a single message may be harassment, or some other form of abuse, but it isn't spam.
Something to keep in mind is that spamming (in any medium) is not simply an offense against the recipient. It is something that harms the medium itself, whether by reducing the total usefulness of the medium to all users, or by overloading the medium itself (flooding). Receiving one unwanted message may be unpleasant, but it does not by itself threaten the medium. Sending a bazillion unwanted messages, though, does. That's why bulk (or "many times") is essential to defining spam. -- FOo 02:49, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
I guess you have to consider where the meaning of spam came from, which according to many sources, junk messages/mail was named spam after the Monty Python SPAM sketch. This in turn does contradict what I said previously, as the main points of this sketch were the fact that the spam was "unwanted", and secondly that it was repeated many times throughout the sketch. Therefore my conclusion is that there are two factors of spam that must be present: it must be unwanted; it must be repeated. However you cannot have one without the other. If the message is simply unwanted its defined as "junk", if the messages is just repeated, this is defined as "bombing" or "flooding" or similar. -- Hm2k 01:14, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Somebody know antispam services? I find only Spam Blocker Crawler on Friday. I think that some antispam services can block all spam in their niche. -- AliveUser 00:03, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
There is Postini, Message Labs, Microsoft Exchange Hoted Filtering (Frontbridge), Surf Control (Blackspider), and a couple dozen others not counting the Anti-Spam appliance vendors like Ironport, Trend, and the others. Most os the managed services block ~95%, but some have much higher false postive rates in order to get that. Litch 23:37, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
I believe this section should be purged as it not only attracts spammers but isn't really very wikipedia'ish as it doesn't really offer any information regarding spam.-- Andeee 15:03, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
Hello everybody, I'm the author of The Incredible Spam Museum; as i just redesigned the web site & put it back online, I was willing to ask an opinion about the eventuality of re-adding a link to T.i.s.m in the external links section —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.140.15.174 ( talk) 17:01, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
I don't suppose anyone will read this, or be interested in it, but this article - and even this talk page - irritates me. You miss some very obvious thing, and get lost in a fog of irrelevant detail. First, you don't even clarify in the intro that UBE is the highest-category definition of (email, the most common) spam (in which UCE also usually sits, as a sub-set), and that this best states what spam, in its most widely experienced form actually is. This is very clear at spamhaus. Also, I don't think it is POV enough (to respond to those remarks). Why not quibble about the POV of pedophilia articles? Or the POV of articles on hunting which espouse the right of hunters to hunt species to extinction for sport? Get real. Some things are massively antisocial, whatever 'logical' arguments can be roused in terms of 'rights'. The article gets so lost in the breathless detail of describing zillions of sorts of spam (which really ought to have their own page - e.g. game spam) that it is more concerned with detail than definition. The most irritating thing about the article, and this talk page, is that there is no attention given to how to solve it. That's I think the most relevant think to cover; and yet there's nothing on that here, really. (And yes, I am sore in the middle of the night after more spam to my private email!)
Hey guys. Just to let you know the origin of the word spam comes from SP(ICED (H)AM, I got it from Websters Dictionary. This information should be added to the article. a better explanation would be "spew" and "scam".
My father told me about a time he started receiving massive amounts of e-mail spam, where he (a network engineer) traced the email back to it's source and found it was coming from the IP address of a computer of one of his business partners. Some investigation revealed that she had a virus on her computer which caused her computer to send commercial spam to everyone in her Microsoft Outlook address book (though without her email address on the from field). It appears that the virus did not actually send the address book info back to the originator, because once the virus was cleaned the spam stopped. I realize this cannot be used as source material, but maybe someone could find a good reference for some text in here about the fact that much spam actually comes from unknowing PC users. Dansiman 23:12, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
Why do people spam? How do they make money doing it? The article should answer these questions. (Also, if you know, post an answer on my talk page because I'm interested.) -- Hyphen5 16:37, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
If "spam" is the colloquial term for UCE why does this article not mention the word "ham" for solicited email? There is also no Ham (electronic) article.
Reference: Sorting the ham from the spam, The Sydney Morning Herald 2003.
-- StevenMcCoy 10:08, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Why does "a certain proportion" of email spam have bizarre dates (past and future)? (Unless there is a Tardis-connection from 2002, 2029 etc) Jackiespeel 19:32, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
It is one thing for there to be a separate article focusing exclusively on e-mail spam; this is entirely reasonable. But it's another thing entirely for the Wikipedia article "Spam" to mention e-mail spam only once in passing.
For this article to omit even the most elementary basic facts about e-mail spam makes no sense at all, since this article is about spam (the vegetarian kind). It is standard for Wikipedia to have a general article that says something about an important sub-topic, and also have a specific detailed article about the subtopic. This is how it should be. Someone with some knowledge about spam (I know very little, myself) ought to write a section of this article -- and it should be the first section after the intro -- that gives basic facts about e-mail spam. E.g., its origins, its growth, how much e-mail it currently generates, perhaps how much it's believed to generate in sales, and its different categories and rough percentages of each, as of now. Daqu 18:09, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
SPAM stands for "Stupid Pointless Anoying Messages" I was tought this in school, it has nothing to do with the Python scetch MJN SEIFER 19:36, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Why is there a whole entry for hobbit spam? It seems odd to reference one minor spam campaign which isn't very unique. I googled "hobbit spam", and didn't get many results, most of which only mentioned the phrase in passing. I've gotten plenty of spam that seemed to be completely pointless, but I've always figured either the ads were filtered out, or the spammer was just trying to "ping" email addresses. Prgrmr@wrk 21:55, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
MJN and I could argue about the true meaning of spam, and probably wouldn't accomplish anything, except I think it's safe to say that the term "spam" was not derived from a sketch on Monte Pythons. "Spam" is an abbreviation, plain and simple, like the many other abbreviated terms used in chat, messaging and email; LOL (Laughing Out Loud), BRB (Be Right Back), IDK (I Don't Know), TTYL (Talk To You Later), etcetera. What "spam" stands for is arguable, since the original use of the term is not documented, and no one knows who exactly coined it. MJN says "Stupid Pointless Annoying Messages", I say "Sending People Advertising Messages", since "spam" originally referred to advertising, (spam email), well before chat rooms and forums became popular and "spam" began being used in place of "flooding". MJN and I could both be right and wrong at the same time, perhaps it's "Sending Pointless Advertising Messages", or any other variation. You be the judge. In any case, Monte Python has no place in the history of "spam". T. L. Fulton 16:48, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
I'm an old fart that was around when I first saw the term SPAMMA shortened to SPAM in the BBS networked groups. It was short for Same Post Across Many (or Multiple) Message Areas. (SPAMMA) It originally did not refer to BUCE, but to cross-posters. I really don't understand why this historical trivia has been overlooked. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.186.188.134 ( talk) 19:53, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
* "Learn How To Stop the Spammers From Finding You"- An informative resource to use to stop spammers from finding you.
Another good link that should be included (or one with similar content) "The First Serving of Spam" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.138.10.111 ( talk) 15:23, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
There is a Spam Forum that is hosted by http://www.spam.org . Go to:
http://www.forum.spam.org/ for discussion and to ask questions about various types of spam. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.68.250.135 ( talk) 02:03, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
What do you call the practice of spamming Houses of Parliament with irrelevant and/or ineffectual bills to "gum up the works", so to speak? -- 78.16.53.60 21:05, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
One proposed system to combat spam is by making the sender pay for email by spending a few seconds of computing time. Outgoing mail is marked with 'postage stamps' that convince the receiver that the sender is genuine. See this project for an implementation of this technique for thunderbird: http://pennypost.sourceforge.net/PennyPost —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.137.56.102 ( talk) 21:37, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
The "Geographical origins of spams" section appears to be shameless PR spam? I don't think the data in this section is at all meaningful as it changes drastically from month to month a spammers adopt to get around anti-spam technologies and filters. This section only seems to exist to promote Sophos and I think it should be removed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ihouston08 ( talk • contribs) 16:52, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
The article states that "the first usage of this sense was by Joel Furr in the aftermath of the ARMM incident of March 31, 1993, in which a piece of experimental software released dozens of recursive messages onto the news.admin.policy newsgroup." I have just read a comment on slashdot ( http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=534516&cid=23199896 ) from a guy named Paul Czarnecki claiming his 19987 usenet posts are the first documented appearance of the term SPAM. He backs that up by showing a 1987 post on usenet news.admin news group ( http://groups.google.com/group/news.admin/msg/483c12f48d13225e?output=gpl ) where his signature uses the term in the sense of this wikipedia article: "Paul Czarnecki -- Spam, spam, spam, Usenet, and spam". Needless to say, the fact that the usenet post in question is stored by Google serves as enough evidence IMHO. Another effect of this information is that the wide spread believe that the term SPAM came from the famous Monty Python sketch may be backed up by the same source (since Czarnecki's signature is clearly a parody to the sketch). I guess this a valid information and deserves to be looked at. []'s Pabloximenes ( talk) —Preceding comment was added at 19:02, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
There doesn't appear to be any good reason for having a separate article, History of spamming. It's short, among other things. And I notice that a lot of questions on this page are actually about the history of spam; no surprise, since most articles of this type do discuss history.
More specifically, I think what's in the article History of spamming should be merged into the daughter articles of this article, particularly E-mail spam and Newsgroup spam. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 13:04, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
I think the problem with SPAM o unsolicited email (bulk or not) is a kind of witch hunting that does not consider it as a useful massive and democratic communication tool. Let's imagine for a moment the scenario presented in the tittle: the aliens are invading the planet and there's only one or very few persons that have discovered this, just like it happened in that serial back form the 70's. How would this people do to let mankind be aware of the exponentially increasing danger? Wouldn't it be what you call spamming and better chain spamming the cheapest and fastest way to do it? What we call massive communication media like tv, radio and newspapers don't have the speed and massive propagation possibilities that spam has. So the problem, as with many other things that we attack in a generic way, is not SPAM but, eventually the bad use of this magnificent massive communication tool. IT is as if we were to ban guns because some people use them to kill others that don't want to be killed and that, up to our knowledge don't deserve to be killed. Or as americans experienced in the 30's we were to ban alcohol because some people get drunk and harm themselves or others. The list of actions to be banned because of missuse could extend for quite a long space, but I think that you might have caught the general idea I'm trying to state. And, by the way, isn't all kind of advertising different kinds of SPAM? Has anyone ever ask you permission to interrupt a program you're watching on tv to try to sell you some kind of brand new widget? Have anyone reading this article ever been solicited permission to receive advertising in his snail mailbox? May be the real problem with electronic SPAM is far away from the focus they're trying to put us into. It's the cheapest and fastest way to let millions of people know something new, be it good or bad, and no one can charge it with a u$s 2000 per second fee as they do on the TV or cable, can they? I think that if SPAM is considered such a big problem then we should be caring about the other mass media that never ask us to send a commercial. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cemls2008 ( talk • contribs) 02:12, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
The article uses the work "depeered". What is this supposed to mean? Is it a typo?
Also, I didn't see any mention of anti-spam (government or otherwise) agencies. Do they exist? Isn't someone out there fighting spam and imprisoning these people that prey on the stupid or naive with their phishing and spamming emails? What agencies exist and can we forward our spam to them so they can stop it?
74.192.28.24 ( talk) 09:48, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
According to RFC 2635 [7] the term spam was derived from a Monty Python sketch and not "widely believed" as the text said. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wuemura ( talk • contribs) 09:36, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
Hey, does anybody know why they have those numbers underneath of a spam message on YouTube? I really want to know and I think we could add it to the article. -- MasterOfTheXP ( talk) 05:25, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
Erm.. are you having a laugh? SPAM is not a reference to monty python, it stands for Stop Pornographic and Abusive Mail... named after the same act. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.155.13.201 ( talk) 11:50, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
ummm...actualy my IT teacher said that it was related to monty python... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.78.91.98 ( talk) 12:45, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
Spam clearly is not "Stop Pornographic and Abusive Mail", because spam doesn't want to stop itself, and it rarely includes pornography. It is truly originating from the food. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.155.30.66 ( talk) 05:29, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
Should spam war be included in this? Spam war is when some one spams (in fourms) a lot. Usally making 5-10 pages and 20-75 pages of pure spam. 75.136.220.208 ( talk) 17:20, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
I excised the following from section 6.2 (Origin of the term):
As interesting as it all is, we have a verified source saying the term originated from the Monty Python sketch, and nothing verified to contradict it (as yet). If a verifiable source for the above is found, by all means add it back in (but in the context of there being disagreement about the origin, rather than the fairly absolute tone of the above.) Manning ( talk) 06:29, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
Are there any numbers on this? As far as I can tell, less than a dozen people out of the tens of millions of spammers around the globe have been caught, effectively making spamming a 100% fool proof crime. Are there any references to anyone getting caught, ever? Other than the few show trial cases? If not, it's astounding, and should definitely be included. 82.181.94.185 ( talk) 17:07, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.7.85.97 ( talk) 00:13, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
Shouldnt we add an entry about the history of spam? See the quote and link below
"This Day In Tech Events That Shaped the Wired World April 12, 1994: Immigration Lawyers Invent Commercial Spam ... 1994: Members of more than 6,000 Usenet discussion groups find themselves the recipients of a message imploring them to use the legal services of Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel to ensure their place in line for a green card from the U.S government.
It didn’t matter that most recipients had no need for such services. They’d just been spammed by a company — for the first time in the net’s history. Not surprisingly, some lines of the message were in ALL CAPS AND BOLD."
http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2010/04/0412canter-siegel-usenet-spam
this is already mentioned under newsgroup spam though http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsgroup_spam
Vmaldia ( talk) 03:05, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
Why do I think it should change? For every major network effect enabled information technology, there is either a present or theoretical corresponding type of malicious behavior (referred to as variants of spam, spim, blam, etc). This is due to an indirect increase in utility from the position of the malicious user: not every new member is a spammer, but every new member is a potential target for spamming. So "spam happens" when the barrier to entry for spammers is less than the utility of spamming memebers of the community.
Words like "spam" are already being applied too loosely. Your proposed definition just makes things even more vague. Also, all to often what qualifies as "individual gain at the expense of the network, community, or individual" is highly subjective.
What about the motivation to do spamming? It seems to do pay off, but why? It seems that most spammers do not advertise products they want to sell or websites they own themselves. So there must be people who pay spammers for advertising their products/websites by spamming. Does it pay off for these people? Of course, if you send a quadrillion mails (which costs you neither time nor money) and get one customer buy your thing, it paid off. But how many customers can you actually get by spam mails? So the question is: how much do you pay a professional spammer for doing his job? And do you pay him for sent mails or for what? And on the other side: Why do people become spammers? And how? Are we even talking about masses of spammers, or are they just a few people, but seem like millions? Are there a lot of professional spammers or is it more an auxiliary income? I think the article could be improved by giving answers to some of these questions.--TeakHoken 193.187.211.118 ( talk) 13:13, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
Added Feb. 4th, 2011 by Knuddi Some of the reports are quite outdated and hence I suggest to add the live statistics of the most spam sending countries. These graphs are actually updated every hour and you can see how f.ex US spam decreases over the day when many home computers are switched off and the botnet is not active.
https://www.scanmailx.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6&Itemid=34 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Knuddi ( talk • contribs) 08:56, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
I couldn't find a place in the "cost of spam" section for this spam cost calculator. It would be a good external link. http://www.commtouch.com/spam-cost-calculator
Drcarver ( talk) 10:16, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
>People who create electronic spam are called spammers.
wouldnt be "spammer" the right term? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.205.31.73 ( talk) 17:37, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
user apokalupsis was involved in an argument on a video game forum where he misused the word spam rather than admit his mistake he came here to change the wiki to suit him here is where it started http://forums.station.sony.com/strategygames/posts/list.m?start=30&topic_id=52744 just thought you might want to know thx — Preceding unsigned comment added by Raspberryhead ( talk • contribs) 23:22, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Spam "usually" goes hand in hand with child pornography? I'd like to see a reference for this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.109.22.34 ( talk) 07:41, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
the article needs a section at the beginning about who coined the term spam. and what, if anything, spam stands for -- or the origin of the term. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gawdsmak ( talk • contribs) 10:58, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
The article (section Etymology) claims that spam is an abbreviation of "Shoulder Pork hAM" whilst the article Spam_(food) claims "SPiced hAM". I searched the Hormel Foods site ( http://www.hormelfoods.com) and the "Official Spam site" ( http://www.spam.com) but could not find any reference either way. Does anybody know? NL Derek ( talk) 21:39, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
Is it considered to be a form of search engine spam if a business uses a top level domain, such as .org, that is reserved for non-commercial uses? Sometimes when I search for information on a type of business restricting my search to .org sites, I get pages of commercial sites that properly belong in .com or .biz. In fact, now I'm even using .org when I'm searching for a commercial product or service just to get a list of untrustworthy businesses to avoid. Bostoner ( talk) 02:38, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
What is UCE? -- Zoe
That's a much better definition than the one in the article itself. Spam is unsolicited commercial email sent in bulk, but it can still be targeted. Getting addresses from a Usenet group about penguins and sending spam about penguin food is still spamming.
What the article misses is that even though the US government said that certain types of spamming is legal, that doesn't mean that it's no longer spam. If a company sends out thousands of emails to customers who gave email addresses for transaction related purposes (and never asked to be on a mailing list) then it's still spam to to send out advertisements to these users. It may be legal spam, but it's spam nevertheless.
The definition in the article is too narrow and goes against long established definitions of UCE. Hagrinas ( talk) 00:04, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
spammé — Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.155.200.66 ( talk) 17:31, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
Could someone provide a reliable reference for the information that spamming was named after the applicable Monty Python sketch? Information on such word derivations can often be apocryphal, and I'd be much more comfortable if it had an explicit reference in the article. The one link I could find, to a rec.games.mud posting, contained several people disputing the etymology. -- Creidieki 4 July 2005 17:28 (UTC)
In the article the paragraph immediately after the beginning of this sub-section (New forms of spam) is not complete. It may have been inadvertently edited out during previous editing sessions. HJKeats 7 July 2005 16:52 (UTC)
Agreed. I reverted to the previous version. Eric 7 July 2005 17:44 (UTC)
I don't know enough to write this myself, but...
a) is there a name for the emails that say "if you send this to 11 people a video will pop up on your screen"?
b) is this spam as such, or does it have another name?
The following statement was prejudicial and argumentative and illegitimately cites another Wikipedia page, so I am removing it: "Anti-spam policies may also be a form of disguised censorship, a way to ban access or reference to questioning alternative forums or blogs by an institution. This form of occult censorship is mainly used by private companies when they can not muzzle criticism by legal ways.[44]" Corjay ( talk) 13:20, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
Article lists Finland as tying with South Korea for fourth place. The Cisco report cited as source for these numbers does not mention Finland at all, and instead lists Indonesia tying with South Korea. The lower places (6-8) seem to be slightly off too. 194.240.127.2 ( talk) 11:01, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Recently, I received a gobs c many of mad feedback around my desire Nolvadex on Clomid, which I use in all cases (at least in the players of bodybuilding), and as an anti-estrogen cure-all as supporting the good cholesterol, and as a stimulator of testosterone. In any circumstance, most people use Nolvadex and not to act with Clomid ginekomestiey. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.27.65.228 ( talk) 04:22, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
I couldn't understand a lot of the article terms. It is not written for non-tech people and therefore is not enlightening. Think of a 70 year old woman with only basic computer knowledge and write for her. It will help keep it clear and actually communicative. 78.86.144.98 ( talk) 18:16, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
This is a moderately complicated topic technically, and can get very complicated (and flamy) socially. Some things that it might be useful to cover in the future, within the purview of email spamming along, include:
Within the purview of Usenet spamming, it might do to have more on the subject of sporgery (touching perhaps on Hipcrime) as well as the Cancelmoose and NoCeM systems. -- FOo
Elvey 01:35, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
This article takes a strong stand against spam. Believe me, I sympathize, but we need to rework it so that it presents the issues from a neutral point of view -- Stephen Gilbert 16:05 Jan 10, 2003 (UTC)
I think it would be very difficult to present a neutral point of view on spam. It's difficult to do this with many issues including child porn or other things most of society frowns on.
I personally think we need to put more pressure on our legislators. I believe the reason spamming is not being legislated properly is because we have not made enough of a fuss with our legislators. The legal definition of spam needs to be changed. Right now if they have a place you can "unsubscribe" from the email it isn't considered spam. The legal definition should be "Any unsolicited mail from any company that does not have your invitation to send you mailing." Right now they can send you what you may view as spam if they have or have had a "business relationship" with you. We need something akin to the no call list. And we should also penalize countries that allow spam by putting import duties on their products. That would stop or at least slow them down. Spammers are in my view on the same level as most selfish people. The same type of people who would sell their kids for drug money. I think a proper punishment would be that spammers are put in prison cells and their spam printed out and put in their cells. Perhaps if their lives were complicated by the spam they create it might impact their behavior. I also think that big business likes spam or it wouldn't exist. I'd love to see the stocks brought back for spammers (wouldn't it be nice to be able to go from 7am to 7pm and pelt them with balls made from their spam???) But until we make spam economically unprofitable it will continue. 75.171.175.153 ( talk) 00:17, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
If anyone wants to do some detective-work on the spammer's POV, here's a list of spammer web forums. -- Khym Chanur 11:32, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)
I'd say one step towards NPOV would be to address these points:
1. Since contact information is frequently false or misleading, why do people advertise with spam?
Anecdotal evidence I've seen points to the conclusion that the money in spam is not made by the person or company who is advertised (let's call him the customer), but by the spammer. A customer will either pay so much for each contact made because of a spam run, which works out to a profit for the spammer of a few thousand dollars for a run (before the cost of the account, & appreciation for the hardware, & labor); or the customer pays a flat fee for the run. In either case, the spammer has no interest in "cleaning" her/his list of addresses; the time saved by reducing the total number of addressees is considered less than the time spent cleaning the list of inactive accounts & people who are not interested.
2. Arguments for spam (they actually do exist!):
I'd add this material to the main article, but I'm writing this all from memory, & don't have any references available. -- llywrch 20:03, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Has anyone *ever* received a spam message like the one added to the page by User:24.159.246.142? I haven't, and I think the statement "most spam blockers can't stop this" is also wrong. If there are no objections, I'll rollback his edits. -- Schnee 22:32, 18 Oct 2003 (UTC)
/\S[A-Za-z]<!--.*-->[A-Za-z]\S/
I removed this for being non-npov: The fact that spam is usually contains very boorish language evidently written by persons lacking the mental capacity to grasp the concept of politeness or spelling or grammatical sentences also contributes to the low esteem in which spammers are held.
and this as I don't think it's true: (By and large, senders of email advertisements each assert that what they do is not spamming.) Often the rationale for such assertions is a dishonest statement that the recipient has "opted in", i.e., solicited bulk mailings from the sender. Angela
Isn't it more appropriate for SPAM to redirect to this article referring to unwarranted mail first? There are many out there (esp. outside US), who have no idea that there is actually a product called SPAM, but any internet user knows what Spamming is. I feel there can be a disambiguation on top of the spamming page that can take care of the product (and the other meanings). Spamming is more well-researched than SPAM anyway.
It is not that I dont see the reason why it is organised as it is now (considering that all-caps SPAM should refer to the product and all), but I still feel it is better, if the article and the disambiguation is organised the other way around. (At least to me, until about a little while ago, the word spam had only one invidious meaning) chance 13:33, Dec 3, 2003 (UTC)
Moved to
Spam (e-mail). A gerund is not a good name for a page title.
Vacuum 23:27, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)
I added a bit on how to stop Messenger spam. Is that in the right place? Did I do this right? (I'm quite new here!). Should I even open a new topic or something like that? -- there_is_no_spoon 18:35, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Someone just added "This kind of spam is very easy to switch off: just click on Start, Run and enter "cmd.exe"." Does this have to be done on every boot, or does windows "memorise" this. If it has to be done every time, then it doesn't qualify as "easy". - snoyes 18:31, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)
OK, I've just changed it
Please let me know what you think of it
--
there_is_no_spoon 20:11, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Do you think that we need manual for turning off MS Windows NET SEND feature here? Let us add how to turn unix talk service etc. I opt for removal of this short manual. It is OT here, since we speak about spam in general. saigon_from_europe (soory for being unlogged)
Shouldn't spam (e-mail) simply be a redirect to Unsolicited Commercial Email?
And while we're at it, shouldn't the Etymolgy section in spamming be in the spam (e-mail) article regardless of the redirect issue? Rick Block 18:54, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Considering how these articles have become a series, I think perhaps the Spam (e-mail) article should be retitled E-mail spam to match the others ( Newsgroup spam, Messaging spam, Blog spam, etc.). Any objections? -- FOo 02:51, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
Finite Monkeys is a blog which collects poetry made from phrases taken from spam messages. -- Jim Regan 03:22, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
We need to mention some successful (and may be not successful) lawsuits against spammers. Here is one recent article on Canadian spammer sued by Yahoo!, for example. http://securitypipeline.com/trends/trends_archive/21800338 (more: http://slashdot.org/articles/04/06/15/1341227.shtml?tid=111&tid=126 http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/2629431 http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/spam/story/0,13427,1239323,00.html) A Russian SMS spammer was also sued recently for sending 15000 SMS with expletives using a Perl script. An article in the criminal code against malware was used. He got a 1-year probational sentence and 100$ fine. Paranoid 18:26, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)
We might need to tell a bit more about spam filtering. There are currently articles on Bayesian filtering, Bayesian inference, SpamAssassin, Stopping e-mail abuse and Spam (e-mail), of course). Paranoid 18:26, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)
There should be a section on what the point of spam is. Lately, a lot of it hasn't been commercial - you get an commercial-sounding phrase in the FROM and SUBJECT fields, and unprofitable gibberish in the body. I think spam is becoming focused on annoyance and denial of service. Anyone know enough to make a section?
-- Aniboy2000 22:13, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Some of that will be E-mail worm infection attempts. Curiously, much of the motivation for many of the most recent worm/virus attempts is to create botnets for sending yet more commercial spam. Remember, they don't care how much they annoy you, and they don't care if they destroy the goose that lays the golden eggs, providing they can make a short-term profit, no matter how small. -- The Anome 23:02, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
What's the point of Spam?
Spam makes up for 14.5 billion emails sent everyday around the word. That means on average almost half of the emails we receive each day are spam! More surprisingly, the U.S. is the nation that generates the most spam, while South Korea takes second place.
So, if you're still wondering, so what's the point? Spam is a money making scheme, it also allows advertisers to take out the middle man and directly advertise in your inbox, and it also gives a avenue for fraudsters who are after your identity, credit card number, and banking information. In fact, identity theft mail (i.e. spammers wanting to use your identity and personal information, which also known as phishing) accounted for 73 percent of all spam mail! S.Tarikh 16:02, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
I agree - the article should make it much more explicit why there is so much spam and the numerous reasons for it. Profit is only one and doesn't explain spams enormous hold over the web. Maliciousness is also a reason and power - to infiltrate people's systems.
78.86.144.98 (
talk)
18:07, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
This article discusses spamming in all media. There are several other articles discussing spamming in specific media, e.g. Newsgroup spam and Spam (e-mail). The specific articles are intended to deal with the technical and social aspects of spamming in those specific media; Spamming is an overview. These are not duplicates and do not need to be merged together. -- FOo 05:41, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Seems ODP: Computers/Internet/Abuse/Spam is a good place for this article ...
Wikipedia - Spamming - Provides a general overview of the spamming phenomenon. Links to articles which discuss the techniques of spammers on particular media: Internet e-mail, instant messaging, Usenet newsgroups, Web search engines, weblogs, and mobile phone messaging. Another article describes ways of stopping e-mail abuse
-- sabre23t 14:35, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I realise that the term has changes over the years. Used to "SPAM" was a verb (in a sense), now it's "spamming." Shouldn't there be some sort of etymology? My understanding for the past ten years has been that SPAM stood for "send(ing) people annoying mail/messages" (there is dispute as to which was the original). Am I the only one that remembers this usage? Dustin Asby 10:18, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I've always known it as "Stupid, pointless, annoying messages". User:Computer Jones
Hi. I moved this article to its present name because of the general Wikipedia convention that gerunds should not be used in article names. Thanks, Vacuum 03:27, Oct 22, 2004 (UTC)
This quote is from the fourth (4th) section of the article "The most prominent Russian spammer ... sparked a powerful anti-spam movement, enraged the deputy minister of communications Andrey Korotkov and provoked a wave of meat-space counter-strikes."
What in the world is meat-space? It fits nicely with SPAM, though I wonder if it is a typo for meta-space. Is it important enough to have its own article?
I just removed the following para:
This was basically a self-promoting claim made by Microsoft folks to tout their "awareness" of the spam issue and, thus, their proprietary anti-spam "solution". As self-promotion, it is therefore not appropriate to Wikipedia.
Moreover, it's not clear to me that the fact of the matter is accessible to us, or to Gates for that matter. He may feel like the most spammed person, but neither he nor Wikipedia has access to a list of all the world's email addresses and the amount of spam they receive. (Nor, for that matter, do we have access to his mail server logs.) There's thus no way to confirm his claim. -- FOo 21:10, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The links in the "Types of spam" section duplicate not only those in the intro para, but also those in the Spamming series box at the bottom. -- FOo 13:30, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I notice there's a certain amount of duplication of links between the "See also" list, and the spam infobox (and there was even before I added the list of different kinds of spam, after accidentally discovering that the links in the introductory paragraph were to the different kinds of spam, and not to the topic of the words that were linked - something which was not at all abvious, and actually sort of against the grain of usual practise in Wikipedia - y'all might want to change that). Anyway, about the duplication: I would say that it's probably a good idea to leave them in both places - I certainly didn't notice the info-box for quite a while, and went straight to the "see also" section for more links. Noel (talk) 13:36, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
It is quite well-attested that the term "spam" was first used in this sense to refer to flooding behavior on MUDs, and that the MUD people got it from Monty Python. The references backing this claim up are already in the article. See, e.g., Brad Templeton's page on the subject: http://www.templetons.com/brad/spamterm.html -- FOo 14:41, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Given that no unequivocal proof has (or can be?) given that it derives from Monty Python, then a caveat must (forever?) remain. However, how on earth has someone arrived at the "false etymologies". Nothing has really been offered by way of solid refutation. The whole section reads like "I personally really like the Monty Python idea and wish to think the rest are all rubbish". POV & painfully so.
This sections reads like someone's favourite folk-etymology rendered without caveats. If there is no clear irrefutable proof that the term derived from Monty Python, then the article should steer well clear of making a mockery of Wikipedia by dessiminating inconclusive notions as hard fact.
92.8.147.86 (
talk)
11:23, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
Removed from the article (actual address redacted):
Unless we have verification from the owner of the posted address, we should not be posting it here at all. Moreover, Wikipedia is not a how-to (e.g. "how to report spam") -- it is an encyclopedia. -- FOo 06:36, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Removed from the article:
In the sense considered by this article, this is not really spam in anything other than metaphor. The paragraph is also chatty (refers to the reader as "you") and the topic might better fit in Spam (e-mail) or an article dealing with business e-mail. However what it is describing sounds to me more like simple improper or rude use of business e-mail. -- FOo 06:27, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I heard that the food item SPAM was sent to soldiers during World War II. Also, This leads me to believe that electronic spam is analogus to that somehow.
Since people were fed SPAM during WWII, I also believe that the feeding of those people was random just like electronic spam. If anybody can give any evidence on whether that caused the term spam to become a term for unsolicited ads on the Internet, type a description about it in the Spam (electionic) article. -- SuperDude 18:42, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Hi, I am working to encourage implementation of the goals of the Wikipedia:Verifiability policy. Part of that is to make sure articles cite their sources. This is particularly important for featured articles, since they are a prominent part of Wikipedia. The Fact and Reference Check Project has more information. If some of the external links are reliable sources and were used as references, they can be placed in a References section too. See the cite sources link for how to format them. Thank you, and please leave me a message when a few references have been added to the article. - Taxman 19:41, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)
Does anybody know anything about this online address book company? What is their record as far as keeping information confidential? -- User:Chinasaur
If I had a "friend" that turned over my email address to someone else 2 things would happen. That "friend" would get an email or call from me and might no longer have the privilege of being a friend with my email address and 2 the "someone else" would also get an email from me, be reported and then would find themselves blocked. When I get unsolicited emails I write asking where they got my email address. If I get the info requested nothing more happens other then they are blocked. If I don't get the info I block further emails from them after reporting them to their ISP. I will not tolerate any spam and spam is anything that I don't request. And I further will not buy from a spammer (I don't care if it's a gallon of gasoline for a penny). You want me to buy from you then use ethical means of advertising and I will find you. [Charli] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.171.175.153 ( talk) 23:57, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
How did an article with such a long name become featured? Ratification 00:57, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
Spam has these three qualities:
Everything meeting the requirements is spam.
—
— Ŭalabio‽ 2005-07-04 01:25:48 (UTC)
― “And postin’ ‘¡Me too!’ like some brain-dead AOL-er”
― “I should do the world a favor and cap you like Old Yeller”
― “You’re just about as useless as jpegs to Helen Keller”
—
Weird Al Yankovic
If you ever write to me offline, please keep what happened to Old Yeller in mind before metooing me like a brain-dead AOLer. ;-)
The first phase of the Nigerian spam when the scamming spammer sends out millions of emails is fully automated. The handling of the greedy stupid gullible people who respond is a manual procedure — those idiots must be as stupid as Shrubya.
—
— Ŭalabio‽ 2005-07-04 17:56:27 (UTC)
I'll watch the news and press agencies, and make sure that this article will reflect what has really happened.
Help is appreciated, but note that Wikipedia is not a discussion forum, so messages like "it's good/bad that this happened" don't belong here. Shinobu 19:29, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
Lynching moved to E-mail spam.
I removed the pro-spam link for now - although not because it's pro-spam.
Apart from that I wonder what the added value of this link is. An intelligent pro-spam essay would be nice to have. However, considering his arguments, and the way he presents them ("Lie #1! Lie #2!" - very reminiscent of some other essays...) I don't think this is the one. Of course I won't stop people from putting it back, as long as points 1 & 2 are given due consideration. Shinobu 21:24, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
"(even goes so far as to say that it's not true most people don't like it)"
That statement is likely made due to the fact that people tend to subscribe to large amounts of "newsletters", "special offer" lists, and things of that nature, which results in them receiving LEGITMATE follow-up emails from the owners of the list(s), which they incorrectly perceive to be spam, when in actuality they had previously instantiated a relationship with the list owner or company.
Anonymous editor 70.20.8.208 added the following comment below the Forum spam section today: — Aapo Laitinen 21:32, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Question: Clicked on Postboosting and found no information just a notice saying "Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. Please search for Postboosting in Wikipedia to check for alternative titles or spellings." What is Postboosting? 00:11, 6 July 2008 (UTC)Charli —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
75.171.175.153 (
talk)
The article says that spam is mass messaging, however I disagree. I believe that you could receive a single message that could be considered spam. -- Hm2k 20:25, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
In addition to this spam is not labelled by the sender, but by the receiver. The receiver is more often than not unaware of whether the message has been received by others. Hm2k 02:34, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
One old definition on Usenet was "the same post many times". The tunable parameters there are "same" (what counts as "the same"?) and "many" (how many times is "many"?) However, in the email world, a standard definition is "unsolicited bulk email" (UBE). Here, the parameters are "unsolicited" (what counts as an "opt-in"?) and "bulk" (again, how many copies?) Usually, an individual sending a single message may be harassment, or some other form of abuse, but it isn't spam.
Something to keep in mind is that spamming (in any medium) is not simply an offense against the recipient. It is something that harms the medium itself, whether by reducing the total usefulness of the medium to all users, or by overloading the medium itself (flooding). Receiving one unwanted message may be unpleasant, but it does not by itself threaten the medium. Sending a bazillion unwanted messages, though, does. That's why bulk (or "many times") is essential to defining spam. -- FOo 02:49, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
I guess you have to consider where the meaning of spam came from, which according to many sources, junk messages/mail was named spam after the Monty Python SPAM sketch. This in turn does contradict what I said previously, as the main points of this sketch were the fact that the spam was "unwanted", and secondly that it was repeated many times throughout the sketch. Therefore my conclusion is that there are two factors of spam that must be present: it must be unwanted; it must be repeated. However you cannot have one without the other. If the message is simply unwanted its defined as "junk", if the messages is just repeated, this is defined as "bombing" or "flooding" or similar. -- Hm2k 01:14, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Somebody know antispam services? I find only Spam Blocker Crawler on Friday. I think that some antispam services can block all spam in their niche. -- AliveUser 00:03, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
There is Postini, Message Labs, Microsoft Exchange Hoted Filtering (Frontbridge), Surf Control (Blackspider), and a couple dozen others not counting the Anti-Spam appliance vendors like Ironport, Trend, and the others. Most os the managed services block ~95%, but some have much higher false postive rates in order to get that. Litch 23:37, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
I believe this section should be purged as it not only attracts spammers but isn't really very wikipedia'ish as it doesn't really offer any information regarding spam.-- Andeee 15:03, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
Hello everybody, I'm the author of The Incredible Spam Museum; as i just redesigned the web site & put it back online, I was willing to ask an opinion about the eventuality of re-adding a link to T.i.s.m in the external links section —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.140.15.174 ( talk) 17:01, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
I don't suppose anyone will read this, or be interested in it, but this article - and even this talk page - irritates me. You miss some very obvious thing, and get lost in a fog of irrelevant detail. First, you don't even clarify in the intro that UBE is the highest-category definition of (email, the most common) spam (in which UCE also usually sits, as a sub-set), and that this best states what spam, in its most widely experienced form actually is. This is very clear at spamhaus. Also, I don't think it is POV enough (to respond to those remarks). Why not quibble about the POV of pedophilia articles? Or the POV of articles on hunting which espouse the right of hunters to hunt species to extinction for sport? Get real. Some things are massively antisocial, whatever 'logical' arguments can be roused in terms of 'rights'. The article gets so lost in the breathless detail of describing zillions of sorts of spam (which really ought to have their own page - e.g. game spam) that it is more concerned with detail than definition. The most irritating thing about the article, and this talk page, is that there is no attention given to how to solve it. That's I think the most relevant think to cover; and yet there's nothing on that here, really. (And yes, I am sore in the middle of the night after more spam to my private email!)
Hey guys. Just to let you know the origin of the word spam comes from SP(ICED (H)AM, I got it from Websters Dictionary. This information should be added to the article. a better explanation would be "spew" and "scam".
My father told me about a time he started receiving massive amounts of e-mail spam, where he (a network engineer) traced the email back to it's source and found it was coming from the IP address of a computer of one of his business partners. Some investigation revealed that she had a virus on her computer which caused her computer to send commercial spam to everyone in her Microsoft Outlook address book (though without her email address on the from field). It appears that the virus did not actually send the address book info back to the originator, because once the virus was cleaned the spam stopped. I realize this cannot be used as source material, but maybe someone could find a good reference for some text in here about the fact that much spam actually comes from unknowing PC users. Dansiman 23:12, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
Why do people spam? How do they make money doing it? The article should answer these questions. (Also, if you know, post an answer on my talk page because I'm interested.) -- Hyphen5 16:37, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
If "spam" is the colloquial term for UCE why does this article not mention the word "ham" for solicited email? There is also no Ham (electronic) article.
Reference: Sorting the ham from the spam, The Sydney Morning Herald 2003.
-- StevenMcCoy 10:08, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Why does "a certain proportion" of email spam have bizarre dates (past and future)? (Unless there is a Tardis-connection from 2002, 2029 etc) Jackiespeel 19:32, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
It is one thing for there to be a separate article focusing exclusively on e-mail spam; this is entirely reasonable. But it's another thing entirely for the Wikipedia article "Spam" to mention e-mail spam only once in passing.
For this article to omit even the most elementary basic facts about e-mail spam makes no sense at all, since this article is about spam (the vegetarian kind). It is standard for Wikipedia to have a general article that says something about an important sub-topic, and also have a specific detailed article about the subtopic. This is how it should be. Someone with some knowledge about spam (I know very little, myself) ought to write a section of this article -- and it should be the first section after the intro -- that gives basic facts about e-mail spam. E.g., its origins, its growth, how much e-mail it currently generates, perhaps how much it's believed to generate in sales, and its different categories and rough percentages of each, as of now. Daqu 18:09, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
SPAM stands for "Stupid Pointless Anoying Messages" I was tought this in school, it has nothing to do with the Python scetch MJN SEIFER 19:36, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Why is there a whole entry for hobbit spam? It seems odd to reference one minor spam campaign which isn't very unique. I googled "hobbit spam", and didn't get many results, most of which only mentioned the phrase in passing. I've gotten plenty of spam that seemed to be completely pointless, but I've always figured either the ads were filtered out, or the spammer was just trying to "ping" email addresses. Prgrmr@wrk 21:55, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
MJN and I could argue about the true meaning of spam, and probably wouldn't accomplish anything, except I think it's safe to say that the term "spam" was not derived from a sketch on Monte Pythons. "Spam" is an abbreviation, plain and simple, like the many other abbreviated terms used in chat, messaging and email; LOL (Laughing Out Loud), BRB (Be Right Back), IDK (I Don't Know), TTYL (Talk To You Later), etcetera. What "spam" stands for is arguable, since the original use of the term is not documented, and no one knows who exactly coined it. MJN says "Stupid Pointless Annoying Messages", I say "Sending People Advertising Messages", since "spam" originally referred to advertising, (spam email), well before chat rooms and forums became popular and "spam" began being used in place of "flooding". MJN and I could both be right and wrong at the same time, perhaps it's "Sending Pointless Advertising Messages", or any other variation. You be the judge. In any case, Monte Python has no place in the history of "spam". T. L. Fulton 16:48, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
I'm an old fart that was around when I first saw the term SPAMMA shortened to SPAM in the BBS networked groups. It was short for Same Post Across Many (or Multiple) Message Areas. (SPAMMA) It originally did not refer to BUCE, but to cross-posters. I really don't understand why this historical trivia has been overlooked. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.186.188.134 ( talk) 19:53, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
* "Learn How To Stop the Spammers From Finding You"- An informative resource to use to stop spammers from finding you.
Another good link that should be included (or one with similar content) "The First Serving of Spam" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.138.10.111 ( talk) 15:23, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
There is a Spam Forum that is hosted by http://www.spam.org . Go to:
http://www.forum.spam.org/ for discussion and to ask questions about various types of spam. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.68.250.135 ( talk) 02:03, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
What do you call the practice of spamming Houses of Parliament with irrelevant and/or ineffectual bills to "gum up the works", so to speak? -- 78.16.53.60 21:05, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
One proposed system to combat spam is by making the sender pay for email by spending a few seconds of computing time. Outgoing mail is marked with 'postage stamps' that convince the receiver that the sender is genuine. See this project for an implementation of this technique for thunderbird: http://pennypost.sourceforge.net/PennyPost —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.137.56.102 ( talk) 21:37, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
The "Geographical origins of spams" section appears to be shameless PR spam? I don't think the data in this section is at all meaningful as it changes drastically from month to month a spammers adopt to get around anti-spam technologies and filters. This section only seems to exist to promote Sophos and I think it should be removed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ihouston08 ( talk • contribs) 16:52, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
The article states that "the first usage of this sense was by Joel Furr in the aftermath of the ARMM incident of March 31, 1993, in which a piece of experimental software released dozens of recursive messages onto the news.admin.policy newsgroup." I have just read a comment on slashdot ( http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=534516&cid=23199896 ) from a guy named Paul Czarnecki claiming his 19987 usenet posts are the first documented appearance of the term SPAM. He backs that up by showing a 1987 post on usenet news.admin news group ( http://groups.google.com/group/news.admin/msg/483c12f48d13225e?output=gpl ) where his signature uses the term in the sense of this wikipedia article: "Paul Czarnecki -- Spam, spam, spam, Usenet, and spam". Needless to say, the fact that the usenet post in question is stored by Google serves as enough evidence IMHO. Another effect of this information is that the wide spread believe that the term SPAM came from the famous Monty Python sketch may be backed up by the same source (since Czarnecki's signature is clearly a parody to the sketch). I guess this a valid information and deserves to be looked at. []'s Pabloximenes ( talk) —Preceding comment was added at 19:02, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
There doesn't appear to be any good reason for having a separate article, History of spamming. It's short, among other things. And I notice that a lot of questions on this page are actually about the history of spam; no surprise, since most articles of this type do discuss history.
More specifically, I think what's in the article History of spamming should be merged into the daughter articles of this article, particularly E-mail spam and Newsgroup spam. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 13:04, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
I think the problem with SPAM o unsolicited email (bulk or not) is a kind of witch hunting that does not consider it as a useful massive and democratic communication tool. Let's imagine for a moment the scenario presented in the tittle: the aliens are invading the planet and there's only one or very few persons that have discovered this, just like it happened in that serial back form the 70's. How would this people do to let mankind be aware of the exponentially increasing danger? Wouldn't it be what you call spamming and better chain spamming the cheapest and fastest way to do it? What we call massive communication media like tv, radio and newspapers don't have the speed and massive propagation possibilities that spam has. So the problem, as with many other things that we attack in a generic way, is not SPAM but, eventually the bad use of this magnificent massive communication tool. IT is as if we were to ban guns because some people use them to kill others that don't want to be killed and that, up to our knowledge don't deserve to be killed. Or as americans experienced in the 30's we were to ban alcohol because some people get drunk and harm themselves or others. The list of actions to be banned because of missuse could extend for quite a long space, but I think that you might have caught the general idea I'm trying to state. And, by the way, isn't all kind of advertising different kinds of SPAM? Has anyone ever ask you permission to interrupt a program you're watching on tv to try to sell you some kind of brand new widget? Have anyone reading this article ever been solicited permission to receive advertising in his snail mailbox? May be the real problem with electronic SPAM is far away from the focus they're trying to put us into. It's the cheapest and fastest way to let millions of people know something new, be it good or bad, and no one can charge it with a u$s 2000 per second fee as they do on the TV or cable, can they? I think that if SPAM is considered such a big problem then we should be caring about the other mass media that never ask us to send a commercial. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cemls2008 ( talk • contribs) 02:12, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
The article uses the work "depeered". What is this supposed to mean? Is it a typo?
Also, I didn't see any mention of anti-spam (government or otherwise) agencies. Do they exist? Isn't someone out there fighting spam and imprisoning these people that prey on the stupid or naive with their phishing and spamming emails? What agencies exist and can we forward our spam to them so they can stop it?
74.192.28.24 ( talk) 09:48, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
According to RFC 2635 [7] the term spam was derived from a Monty Python sketch and not "widely believed" as the text said. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wuemura ( talk • contribs) 09:36, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
Hey, does anybody know why they have those numbers underneath of a spam message on YouTube? I really want to know and I think we could add it to the article. -- MasterOfTheXP ( talk) 05:25, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
Erm.. are you having a laugh? SPAM is not a reference to monty python, it stands for Stop Pornographic and Abusive Mail... named after the same act. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.155.13.201 ( talk) 11:50, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
ummm...actualy my IT teacher said that it was related to monty python... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.78.91.98 ( talk) 12:45, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
Spam clearly is not "Stop Pornographic and Abusive Mail", because spam doesn't want to stop itself, and it rarely includes pornography. It is truly originating from the food. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.155.30.66 ( talk) 05:29, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
Should spam war be included in this? Spam war is when some one spams (in fourms) a lot. Usally making 5-10 pages and 20-75 pages of pure spam. 75.136.220.208 ( talk) 17:20, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
I excised the following from section 6.2 (Origin of the term):
As interesting as it all is, we have a verified source saying the term originated from the Monty Python sketch, and nothing verified to contradict it (as yet). If a verifiable source for the above is found, by all means add it back in (but in the context of there being disagreement about the origin, rather than the fairly absolute tone of the above.) Manning ( talk) 06:29, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
Are there any numbers on this? As far as I can tell, less than a dozen people out of the tens of millions of spammers around the globe have been caught, effectively making spamming a 100% fool proof crime. Are there any references to anyone getting caught, ever? Other than the few show trial cases? If not, it's astounding, and should definitely be included. 82.181.94.185 ( talk) 17:07, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.7.85.97 ( talk) 00:13, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
Shouldnt we add an entry about the history of spam? See the quote and link below
"This Day In Tech Events That Shaped the Wired World April 12, 1994: Immigration Lawyers Invent Commercial Spam ... 1994: Members of more than 6,000 Usenet discussion groups find themselves the recipients of a message imploring them to use the legal services of Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel to ensure their place in line for a green card from the U.S government.
It didn’t matter that most recipients had no need for such services. They’d just been spammed by a company — for the first time in the net’s history. Not surprisingly, some lines of the message were in ALL CAPS AND BOLD."
http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2010/04/0412canter-siegel-usenet-spam
this is already mentioned under newsgroup spam though http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsgroup_spam
Vmaldia ( talk) 03:05, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
Why do I think it should change? For every major network effect enabled information technology, there is either a present or theoretical corresponding type of malicious behavior (referred to as variants of spam, spim, blam, etc). This is due to an indirect increase in utility from the position of the malicious user: not every new member is a spammer, but every new member is a potential target for spamming. So "spam happens" when the barrier to entry for spammers is less than the utility of spamming memebers of the community.
Words like "spam" are already being applied too loosely. Your proposed definition just makes things even more vague. Also, all to often what qualifies as "individual gain at the expense of the network, community, or individual" is highly subjective.
What about the motivation to do spamming? It seems to do pay off, but why? It seems that most spammers do not advertise products they want to sell or websites they own themselves. So there must be people who pay spammers for advertising their products/websites by spamming. Does it pay off for these people? Of course, if you send a quadrillion mails (which costs you neither time nor money) and get one customer buy your thing, it paid off. But how many customers can you actually get by spam mails? So the question is: how much do you pay a professional spammer for doing his job? And do you pay him for sent mails or for what? And on the other side: Why do people become spammers? And how? Are we even talking about masses of spammers, or are they just a few people, but seem like millions? Are there a lot of professional spammers or is it more an auxiliary income? I think the article could be improved by giving answers to some of these questions.--TeakHoken 193.187.211.118 ( talk) 13:13, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
Added Feb. 4th, 2011 by Knuddi Some of the reports are quite outdated and hence I suggest to add the live statistics of the most spam sending countries. These graphs are actually updated every hour and you can see how f.ex US spam decreases over the day when many home computers are switched off and the botnet is not active.
https://www.scanmailx.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6&Itemid=34 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Knuddi ( talk • contribs) 08:56, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
I couldn't find a place in the "cost of spam" section for this spam cost calculator. It would be a good external link. http://www.commtouch.com/spam-cost-calculator
Drcarver ( talk) 10:16, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
>People who create electronic spam are called spammers.
wouldnt be "spammer" the right term? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.205.31.73 ( talk) 17:37, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
user apokalupsis was involved in an argument on a video game forum where he misused the word spam rather than admit his mistake he came here to change the wiki to suit him here is where it started http://forums.station.sony.com/strategygames/posts/list.m?start=30&topic_id=52744 just thought you might want to know thx — Preceding unsigned comment added by Raspberryhead ( talk • contribs) 23:22, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Spam "usually" goes hand in hand with child pornography? I'd like to see a reference for this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.109.22.34 ( talk) 07:41, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
the article needs a section at the beginning about who coined the term spam. and what, if anything, spam stands for -- or the origin of the term. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gawdsmak ( talk • contribs) 10:58, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
The article (section Etymology) claims that spam is an abbreviation of "Shoulder Pork hAM" whilst the article Spam_(food) claims "SPiced hAM". I searched the Hormel Foods site ( http://www.hormelfoods.com) and the "Official Spam site" ( http://www.spam.com) but could not find any reference either way. Does anybody know? NL Derek ( talk) 21:39, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
Is it considered to be a form of search engine spam if a business uses a top level domain, such as .org, that is reserved for non-commercial uses? Sometimes when I search for information on a type of business restricting my search to .org sites, I get pages of commercial sites that properly belong in .com or .biz. In fact, now I'm even using .org when I'm searching for a commercial product or service just to get a list of untrustworthy businesses to avoid. Bostoner ( talk) 02:38, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
What is UCE? -- Zoe
That's a much better definition than the one in the article itself. Spam is unsolicited commercial email sent in bulk, but it can still be targeted. Getting addresses from a Usenet group about penguins and sending spam about penguin food is still spamming.
What the article misses is that even though the US government said that certain types of spamming is legal, that doesn't mean that it's no longer spam. If a company sends out thousands of emails to customers who gave email addresses for transaction related purposes (and never asked to be on a mailing list) then it's still spam to to send out advertisements to these users. It may be legal spam, but it's spam nevertheless.
The definition in the article is too narrow and goes against long established definitions of UCE. Hagrinas ( talk) 00:04, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
spammé — Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.155.200.66 ( talk) 17:31, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
Could someone provide a reliable reference for the information that spamming was named after the applicable Monty Python sketch? Information on such word derivations can often be apocryphal, and I'd be much more comfortable if it had an explicit reference in the article. The one link I could find, to a rec.games.mud posting, contained several people disputing the etymology. -- Creidieki 4 July 2005 17:28 (UTC)
In the article the paragraph immediately after the beginning of this sub-section (New forms of spam) is not complete. It may have been inadvertently edited out during previous editing sessions. HJKeats 7 July 2005 16:52 (UTC)
Agreed. I reverted to the previous version. Eric 7 July 2005 17:44 (UTC)
I don't know enough to write this myself, but...
a) is there a name for the emails that say "if you send this to 11 people a video will pop up on your screen"?
b) is this spam as such, or does it have another name?
The following statement was prejudicial and argumentative and illegitimately cites another Wikipedia page, so I am removing it: "Anti-spam policies may also be a form of disguised censorship, a way to ban access or reference to questioning alternative forums or blogs by an institution. This form of occult censorship is mainly used by private companies when they can not muzzle criticism by legal ways.[44]" Corjay ( talk) 13:20, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
Article lists Finland as tying with South Korea for fourth place. The Cisco report cited as source for these numbers does not mention Finland at all, and instead lists Indonesia tying with South Korea. The lower places (6-8) seem to be slightly off too. 194.240.127.2 ( talk) 11:01, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Recently, I received a gobs c many of mad feedback around my desire Nolvadex on Clomid, which I use in all cases (at least in the players of bodybuilding), and as an anti-estrogen cure-all as supporting the good cholesterol, and as a stimulator of testosterone. In any circumstance, most people use Nolvadex and not to act with Clomid ginekomestiey. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.27.65.228 ( talk) 04:22, 12 June 2013 (UTC)