Spam began to be a serious problem since year 2002. The following graph shows the dramatic increase of spam messages and there typical subject coverage.

(Source: http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/Spam)

THE ORIGIN OF "SPAM"

The actual provenance of the word "spam" comes from a popular Monty Python sketch broadcasted in 1970 where two customers are trying to order a breakfast without spam (tinned meat made mainly from ham by Hormel Foods Corporation) from a menu which contains it in every entree. Despite the sketch was rather short, the word "spam" was mentioned 94 times; along with a Viking' s song about "spam".

WHAT IS SPAM?

Coming to the Internet world, spam has not an official definition, thus some people consider advertisement via e-mails as spam, and others consider spam as all e-mails that they do not want . However, the two more prevalent definitions are Unsolicited Bulk E-mail (UBE) and Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (UBE). By using the term unsolicited it is actually meant that recient(s) have not given their prior consent in contrast for example to e-newletters. Effectively, the difficulties to define spam affect also addressing the real problem of spamming.

THE FUTURE OF SPAM

Up today, spam rate seems to increase in annual basis and it is actually "possess" a great percentage of the total amount of e-mails rating from 20% to 70% in some circumstances. Regarding the future of spam based on an IDC research that it is illustrated below; spam is going to increase gradually and relatively with the total amount of e-mails for the forthcoming years.

Worldwide all e-mail messages sent daily
(Alerts & Notifications, , Spam and Person-to-Person)

Source: IDC, 2003

PROTECT YOURSELF AGAINST SPAM