We explain what Spam is and for what purpose this malicious message acts. Also, the different ways to prevent and combat it.
What is spam?
The term Spam is an English word that refers to junk mail or junk messages from Internet, that is: unsolicited, unwanted messages and / or with unknown sender, sent in large quantities and usually with advertising content. This term has also given rise to the action of thespamming and its equivalents in Spanish likespasm.
The word Spam historically comes from the WWII, when the allied soldiers at the front were massively distributed a famous brand of canned meat bearing that name (contraction ofSpiced Ham, seasoned ham).
The term became popular after British comedians Monty Python in 1970 used it as part of a skit in which they were served Spam for lunch every day in their seriesMonty Python’s Flying Circus.
This is a common practice today, the first practice of which took place at the dawn of the Internet, supposedly in 1994, when the law firm Canter and Siegel announced the services of your signature through a mass message on the Usenet (User’s Network).
Other versions assure that in 1978, when the Internet was still for strictly military use (called ARPANET), a massive message from the company of computers DEC promoting its new product.
Spam is frequent in any of the current means of communication electronics, particularly in the email or e-mail, and in instant messaging services.
This term also serves to refer to viruses and pieces of software malicious that, scattered on the Internet, that without the permission of the Username they bombard him with advertising misleading, pornography offers, gambling, dating sites and other similar services.
Prevention and combat of spam
The most common recommendations to combat Spam are:
- Use a firewall. It's about a Program of discriminated blocking of the signals that enter and leave the computer through the Internet, to prevent other users from accessing the information in our system, or that malicious programs can access our connection and spread their seed to our contacts.
- Use antivirus and antimalware. exist programs specifically designed to clean viruses and invasive programs (trojans) from a computer, many of which can be downloaded for free or purchased for little money. Its use is recommended to carry out regular maintenance of the computer or to prevent said malicious software from being installed on our system.
- Do not open suspicious messages. Especially those emails whose senders are not known or reliable (sometimes it is necessary to check the address from which they write to us), regardless of what it says in its sender. Most infectious emails promise easy money, free services, or big surprise prizes. None of that is real.
- Do not fall for misleading online advertising. A common way to get infected is by clicking on attractive advertising offers, which often lead to dead ends and illegally downloading software. One should be suspicious of offers that seem too good to be true, and under no circumstances should you download, much less run, unknown software and / or downloaded from pages suspicious.