Posts Tagged ‘genuine message’

What is Spam?

Tuesday, June 17th, 2008

Spam is the term used to describe junk mail messages sent to your e-mail account.

You may receive an e-mail and not recognise the address of the sender. Alternatively, spam mails can come from people you know, but who are not aware their account is being used by a malicious program to automatically send out junk mail to contacts in their address book.

Someone may forward a spam e-mail to you thinking it is a genuine message - perhaps appearing to be from a charity asking for your help to spread their message to everyone you know.

Like junk mail that comes through your door, spam e-mails often try to encourage you to buy a product or sign up for a service. Often there will be an attached file or a link to a web site, but these may actually be trying to install malicious software on your PC or attempting to get your personal information.