Spam

Spam in the context of the Internet refers to unwanted or unsolicited messages that are broadcast indiscriminately and as widely as possible.

The term originates from the early days of the Internet, when anyone sending a message to every name on an email list was said to be "spamming", a reference to the Monty Python sketch where a song goes "spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, etc."

Spam is often used for marketing purposes, with messages carrying advertising or information about products and services.

However, spam is also often used as a means of infecting computers with malware, by distributing a malicious program along with a bogus claim that the file is actually salacious content. For this reason, users should always be wary of opening attached files in emails.

Spam is likewise used to perpetuate scams, such as those promising that the recipient has won the lottery or some other prize and requesting money or sensitive personal details in order to facilitate a claim.

By some measures, spam is said to account for over 90 percent of all emails traversing the internet. It is big business for criminal gangs, since it costs little to send spam and only a few recipients need to be fooled in order for them to make a profit.