The word "spam" is used on the Internet to refer to certain types of messages in the newsgroups and in e-mail (as opposed to the meat product made by Hormel). Examples of spam are the messages many of you see in newsgroups which are posted identically to many newsgroups at one time, or the advertisements that appear in your e-mail box from companies you have never dealt with before.
Some of you have asked if the "make money fast!!" and "sex! sex! sex!" postings are spam. They are if, as is often the case, the same message is posted to a lot of newsgroups or mailed to a lot of e-mail addresses. When the same messages, regardless of content, are posted too many times they take up space and this causes problems for the people and equipment that keep the Internet running.
Note: some of you have Internet service providers that filter spam out for you, or have software running which does this. If you want to know if this is the case, ask the technical help at your Internet service provider and/or the person(s) who set up your computer for you. Also, you may have software that is not yet, but can be, set to filter spam.
The following list of resources are provided here to help answer some of your questions. Spam is a controversial topic, so please feel free to e-mail us if you have a suggestion for a site you would like us to include here. This list is alphabetical, not in order of importance or ease-of-understanding. We encourage you to skip around and find what best answers your particular questions at your individual level of technical understanding.
The Coalition
Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (CAUCE)A
Collection of Anti-Spam ResourcesCurrent
Usenet Spam Thresholds and Guidelines FAQThe
E-Mail Abuse Frequently Asked Questions Home PageFight Spam on
the Internet!Mail Abuse Protection
System Home PageThe
Net Abuse FAQ (Frequently Asked (Questions)Spam:
How to Fight ItThese groups often discuss spam from varying points of view and at times the discussion can get heated! You are advised to lurk for awhile before posting and also read the FAQs for the groups. If any of the terms in bold are not familiar, you can find out more on our "New to the Internet" page (so you're not new? we can all use a refresher now and again! besides, who's going to see you checking the page out? Certainly not us; we're probably busy reading up on the Net ourselves).
alt.current-events.net-abuse.spam
And let's not forget the original "SPAM" !
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