Chapter 13. How Spam Works—and How to Fight It

How Spam Works—and How to Fight It

What is the most annoying thing that people face when they use the Internet? Spam.

Nothing else even comes close to being as annoying as spam. Unwanted email clogs all our inboxes, floods us with pornographic come-ons, and gets worse with each passing year.

The term spam comes from a Monty Python skit in which every item on a menu contains Spam luncheon meat. It was originally used to refer to unsolicited postings for commercial products or services on Usenet, especially when they were cross-posted to several newsgroups.

How bad is the problem? Postini, an email security and management company, claims ...

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