What is spam?

Spam is considered to be electronic junk mail or junk newsgroup postings. The term "spam" is Internet slang that refers to unsolicited commercial email (UCE) or unsolicited bulk email (UBE). Some people refer to this kind of communication as junk email to equate it with the paper junk mail that comes through the US Mail.

In addition to wasting people's time with unwanted email, spam also eats up a lot of network bandwidth. Consequently, there are many organisations, as well as individuals, who have taken it upon themselves to fight spam with a variety of techniques. But because the Internet is public, there is really little that can be done to prevent spam, just as it is impossible to prevent junk mail. However, some online services have instituted policies to prevent spammers from spamming their subscribers.