SPAMMING BY VASILIS ODONTIDIS Please read carefully, This is secret and confidential. “It is true that I pray to GOD before I was pushed forward to contact you for this business but I want you to assure me solemnly that you are a trustworthy, reliable, honest and capable to avoid cheating me in this business”

WHAT IS SPAMMING ? Spamming is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited, undesired bulk messages.

WHY SPAMMING ? Spamming is economically viable 1.advertisers have no operating costs beyond the management of their mailing lists 2.it is difficult to hold senders accountable for their mass mailings  spam  Instant messaging spam  Usenet newsgroup spam  Web search engine spam  Spam in blogs  Mobile phone messaging spam FORMS OF SPAMMING:

SPAMMING

spam What is Spam ? spam involves sending nearly identical messages to a few or thousands (or millions) of recipients by , with the purpose of advertising and gaining economic profits. How spammers operate ? Perpetrators of such spam ("spammers") often harvest addresses of prospective recipients. They create accounts on free webmail services, such as Hotmail, and they use bots to send the s. They send it from someone else's computer and network connection, they use open relays, open proxies or by commissioning computer viruses. Obfuscate message contents What is the context of such mails ? It includes pornographic context,announcements of get rich quick schemes, unlicensed computer software etc

The non-commercial side of spamming A number of evangelists have spammed Usenet and media with preaching messages A growing number of criminals are also using spam to perpetrate various sorts of fraud, and in some cases have used it to lure people to locations where they have been kidnapped, held for ransom, and even murdered During July 2006 there has been an enormous increase in unsolicited messages containing nothing but three lines from JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit Forged spam has been used as a tool of harassment worms or viruses may be spammed to set up an initial pool of infected machines

What are the dangers of spamming? It clutters your inbox It takes time to download It is annoying If you reply to them complaining then usually they retaliate in a most unpleasant way Children receive spam with inappropriate content They steal other peoples’ accounts, falsify identities to achieve their goal

spam in numbers Top 12 relaying spam countries The breakdown of spam relaying by continent is as follows: Spam in numbers An spam is sent to 600 addresses First large-scale spam sent to 6000 bulletin boards, reaching millions of people (June) 30 billion per day [4][4] (June) 55 billion per day [5][5]

Ethical Issues "Spam is the result a lack of ethics and integrity in regards to promotional activities on the internet. It's not a question of whether or not you get caught. It's a question of maintaining your ethics and integrity while still engaging in promotion, marketing and advertising." --Richard Lowe There are varying opinions on the ethical aspects of UBEs 1.some feel Spam is to be condemned 2.some others feel that spam is a mere extension of direct marketing on the Internet 3.others take a middle-man approach saying it is up to the end-user to decide what is Spam, and what is not spamming is a new phenomenon in cybernet and thus the basic foundations to fight it with legal act are not yet established Net abuse is not concerned a crime yet.

Is any protection against spam? providers are investing a lot of money in making new filters, applying bots that can figure out and block these s There are a lot of sites and people devoted on tracing, reporting and guiding other people how to fight spam New laws allow the prosecution and punishment of spammers

Discussion Questions Which is your opinion about spam, according to the three different ethical approaches? Is your opinion informed by personal experience? Is spamming legal or computer crime? Is blocking spam censorship?

Discussion January 24 th 2004 at the World Economic Forum in Davos Bill Gates predicted: -Technology would make spam "a thing of the past" within two years. Question : One month left before entering the year 2007 and almost 3 years after Bill Gate’s prediction and still spamming is something that everybody deals with in daily basis. Do you believe that spamming can be fought effectively?

Discussion Goodmail’ s approach on fighting spamming: “Bulk er should be charged a penny per message to bypass spam filters and to avoid being incorrectly tossed as junk.” Question : Knowing that other providers such as Yahoo were also interested in this idea do you think that by charging s will discourage spammers or is it just another way for companies to have an extra source of profit?

Origin of spamming Spam was named after a Monty Python sketch that was named SPAM To watch the video follow the link: