Word: spamming
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...well—it’s been around and stirring up controversy since long before Viagra. Indeed, the first e-mail chain letter was sent across the nascent Internet in 1982 right as current college seniors were being born. A good benchmark for the spread of spam is the size of various lists of potential targets offered for sale over the years—in 1995 lists of around 2 million e-mail addresses could be purchased, but this number skyrocketed to 7 million in a year, reached 80 million by 1997, and by 2001, with 200 million...
...What is spam exactly? Technically (if it has a technical definition) it refers to undesired commercial e-mail. Usually, in practice, it advertises services that are borderline illicit, and sometimes downright illegal or fraudulent. One wildly popular form of spam, commonly referred to as the “Nigerian” or “4-1-9” scam (surely you’ve seen the e-mails—from the ex-wife of late Nigerian president GENERAL SANI ABACHA or what have you, claiming that she’ll give you a $10 million commission...
Other common forms of spam include offers to acquire prescription drugs (usually not antibiotics or allergy medications) under the table or herbal remedies to certain small problems, the usefulness of which I leave to your significant other to decide...
...what can we do to take back our inboxes? On the technical side of things, Harvard has given us access to some of the best (though still imperfect) spam filtering tools—you can enable the ominously named SpamAssassin for your inbox by typing blockmail at the fas% prompt instead of pine (or, for those of you with no idea what I’m talking about, by going to http://www.fas.harvard.edu/computing/myaccount/). These tools learn from the spam they receive, so they’re always improving as they play a never-ending tit-for-tat with...
More importantly, perhaps, the political powers that be are finally (slowly) committing to fighting spam, despite the lobbying power that its originators seem to possess. A new law that went into effect early this year has made certain forms of unwanted e-mail communication illegal—now all spam needs to be opt-out (there must be some way to let a would-be spammer know that you’d like no further communication from them) and certain guidelines have been set regarding the use of misleading subject lines. Some have called the bill inadequate, arguing that...