Lately Internet users have complained more frequently on receiving more and more unbidden correspondence of advertising nature. On the Web such messages are called spam.


The term “spam” originates from an old (1972) sketch of the English comic group Monty Python Flying Circus where restaurant customers trying to make an order have to listen to a Viking chorus praising on canned meat ( SPAM). All dishes on the restaurant menu are made of this meat.


Concerning obtrusive network advertising, the term “ spam” became commonly used several years ago when advertising agencies started publishing their advertisements in Usenet newsgroups. Luckily for subscribers of the newsgroups, this did not continue for a long time as the Usenet technology provides message filtering and newsgroups administrators simply removed the spam before it reached most people. Having failed here, the spammers switched to sending their advertisements to groups of recipients.


In present-day Internet spam is regarded as reprehensible occupation and legislation of some countries provides this or that responsibility for activities of this kind. For example, in the USA one of the largest Internet providers America Online (AOL) every month brings several suits against spammers who systematically send advertisements to its customers.


But what is so bad in spam? Often users simply pay no attention to network advertisements deleting spam messages from their mailboxes. But actually, the malignancy of such mailings lies in the fact that it takes the spammer almost nothing but costs a lot for the others, both the spam recipient and their provider. Huge amounts of advertising correspondence may lead to excessive load on provider channels and mail servers and due to this normal mail, which may be very long-awaited by the recipients, will pass far slower. The spammer pays virtually nothing for mail dispatch. Spam recipient is the one who pays their provider for the time spent online receiving unasked correspondence from the mail server.


Spammer has many ways to find out your e-mail address so that to use it later for mailing. There are lots of programs which collect e-mails of people writing messages to teleconferences and newsgroups. Such a program is capable of collecting thousands of e-mails per hour and turning them into a database to use it later for spamming. Some spammers offer in their messages to purchase CDs with this information just for a few dollars. One more method for spammers is to look through different periodicals and extract e-mail addresses of the companies who publish there their announcements or advertisements.


If you have received a message containing commercial advertisement without ordering it, try to define who is the spammer’s provider using advices from this article and make a complaint to the corresponding technical addresses. If something is still not clear after reading the article, turn for help to your Internet provider.


If your complaints to the spammer’s provider are ineffectual and the spammers continue their activity, other providers are usually ready even to completely ban mail receipt from the mail server of the provider who upholds actions of unfair users.


So how to avoid spam messaging?

• Try not to leave your e-mail address at different servers of dubious content.


• Never reply to spam messages. Doing so you let them know that your address is valid and messages arriving there are read by the address owner. If the spam message says that you can exclude yourself from their mailing list by sending a “remove” command to a certain address – it’s a lie in most cases. Following this advice you will only confirm that your address can be used for further messaging.


• Don’t send heaps of rubbish to the spammer’s address. It is possible that you have incorrectly determined the source of spam and as a result people who have no relation to the spammers will suffer.