Forum Archive Index - October 1999

[Will Bryant <will@sharechat.co.nz>]

> Just showing my ignorance
> here...I know what spam is , but can someone explain S 
> P  A  M  please ??
spam is usually
defined as unsolicited commercial email (UCE), but in general it means
any email a person or more likely company sends you that you never asked
to receive (eg. filling in your email address on a web site to receive
promotional email doesn't count).  The name is derived from a famous
Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch (involving the infamous "meat
product" made by a company Hormel).

If you haven't been on the net long then you may have never received
spam, but the worst offenders typically trawl the web and usenet looking
for email addresses, and then send mail advertising get-rich-quick
schemes, porn sites, new products etc to all the addresses (often from a
fake or spoofed address to avoid reprisals).  I, like most others
who've been on the net for a while, receive a few of these a week. 
It's definitely not good netiquette and is usually guaranteed a negative
response from the recipients.

In this case it was a relatively minor transgression, but it was
nonetheless still clearly spam.

_______________________________________________________________________

Will Bryant, will@core-dev.co.nz                    cell +64 21 655 443

http://www.core-dev.co.nz/    Personal: http://www.core-dev.co.nz/will/

ShareChat Ltd. technical manager            http://www.sharechat.co.nz/

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