What is Spam?

Spam is a mass mailing of letters (most often advertising) that occurs without the consent of the recipients. The term acquired its modern meaning in 1986, when people began to receive massive letters advertising pyramid schemes.

Spam spreads through email, social media, SMS, comments, forums, message boards, and blogs. It can be divided into two types: safe and dangerous.

The first one does not pose any danger and consists in sending advertising letters, as well as “letters of happiness”. Their peculiarity is that the user did not give his consent to receive them.

The dangerous spam category includes:

• Phishing – mailing on behalf of popular brands in order to attract the user to a site similar to the official one and obtain his personal data;
• Nigerian letters – scammers offer a large amount of money after a small contribution from the user;
• Malicious programs – when going to the site specified in the letter, a virus or Trojan can get onto the victim’s device. They can both steal all personal data and use the computer for their own purposes.