What is spam and its origin. What is spam? Advertising of illegal products

If you have ever worked with e-mail, you are familiar with such an unpleasant phenomenon as spam - a mass mailing of advertising messages carried out without the consent of the recipient. Usually it is carried out not centrally, from one server, but with the help of the so-called spam network, simultaneously from many computers connected to the Internet. Moreover, the owner of such a PC does not need to know that his workstation is a spammer. Many users do not attach much importance to spam: just think, a promotional letter has arrived, delete it - and you're done.

However, not everything is as simple as it seems. Firstly, such emails often contain viruses (usually so-called bots that include your computer in an existing spam network, which, in turn, can lead to it being blacklisted). Secondly, spam mailings generate huge traffic, thus creating a very serious load on network resources. It would seem that the size of one letter is small, but imagine that such messages are sent in millions of copies, and this already seriously slows down the Internet and forces you to pay for extra traffic, especially if your computer is a bot in a spam network. Thirdly, spam emails often contain fraudulent emails. Among them, the two most common types are distinguished - "Nigerian letters" and phishing. The first is so named because of the large distribution in Nigeria and other states of the African continent. Usually in these letters the addressee is asked to help in the implementation of a multi-million dollar operation, for example, receiving an inheritance from a rich uncle, referring to various difficulties in his native country. All that is required of you is to give a small bribe to an official or open a bank account and put a certain amount into it and the like. Of course, in any case, the victim will not see the promised money, because they simply do not exist. The name of the second type of fraud - phishing - comes from the English fishing, i.e. "fishing". Its purpose is to lure confidential information about bank accounts, credit card numbers, passwords, etc. from users. It works as follows: you receive a letter supposedly from the bank administration with a request to confirm your data in the near future, otherwise your account may be blocked. It also contains the address of the resource where you need to fill out an online form, which, among others, contains the fields required by scammers. Its design is often made in the style of the real site of your bank, and the address (domain name) may differ by only one or two letters. So when receiving such correspondence, you should be extremely careful.

Address databases and how not to get there

Of course, in order to send an email, the spammer needs to know your email address. However, this is not as difficult a task as it seems. The main way is to use the so-called crawlers (Internet bots), like those used search engines. They automatically browse web pages, following the links they encounter, and look for the addresses in the text. And since many people visit various blogs, forums, or simply have home pages where they indicate their e-mail in clear text, their address is likely to fall into the spam database, which, moreover, can be subsequently resold several times. As a result, you will receive more and more valuable offers to inherit in Nigeria, buy wholesale pills for all occasions, attend much-needed Herbalife seminars, enlarge your penis and download all the porn from the Internet. To prevent this from happening, there are little tricks. Firstly, it is not always necessary to indicate your main address if, for example, you only need to receive a couple of letters to it: you can create a mailbox on a free service, since there are enough of them now, or use a temporary mailbox, of which there are also plenty. If you desperately need to leave exactly your main address, it is easy to encrypt it. As a rule, crawlers look for constructions like [email protected], and if you change it a little (for example, to myname(a)mydomain.com), then there is a chance that the bot will miss it. For reliability, you can try to remake the address more significantly, in order to get something like myname[dog]mydomain[dot]com as a result. A person can easily “decrypt” an e-mail, but a not-too-smart bot is unlikely. If you really want the address to still look correct, but not be recognized by the bot, you can use the replacement of text from e-mail with a picture with it, but there is a slight inconvenience here - the address cannot be copied to the clipboard and you have to enter manually. In principle, simple JavaScript can solve this problem, but we will not delve into this topic, besides, there are many services that help create both images with an address and “safe links” to them. However, sometimes spammers do not need to know your e-mail at all: emails are simply sent to automatically generated addresses of popular email services (for example, [name]@gmail.com) or large companies([name]@microsoft.com). In this case, [name] is a generated set of characters, one of which may be the real address. And one more thing - many spam networks will be very happy to receive a response from you like “leave me alone at last ...”, then the address will be marked as “active” and the spam flow will most likely increase greatly, so you should not write to spammers.

How to avoid spam emails

First of all, you should not leave your email address on various kinds of public resources, or at least use the tips from the previous section. If unwanted mail starts coming to your address, then spam filters will come to the rescue. These are programs or modules that are part of email clients, which identify spam emails for one reason or another and deal with them according to specified rules. Three main methods are used to determine "spam/not spam". The most common is to analyze the content of the email and compare it with known spam. Of course, for the successful operation of such a filter, you need to have a pre-assembled collection of spam "creativity", and the larger this collection, the better, the filter will work more efficiently. A similar system is used by the popular Gmail service, which processes millions of different messages every day, and every time a user clicks a button Report spam, the unwanted message enters the filter base. Given Gmail's huge customer base, it has no shortage of "learning materials." The next most popular method is to analyze the IP address of the computer from which the letter was received and compare it with the blacklist. Information about this can be obtained through the DNS (Domain Name Service), hence the name of such lists - DNSBL (DNS Black List). Unfortunately, this method is not particularly effective, as spammers find new servers for their purposes faster than they can be blacklisted. In addition to black lists, there are also so-called gray lists. They are based on an analysis of the "behavior" of spam software, since the behavior of mail servers differs from that of spam servers (for example, such programs do not resend a message when an error occurs). Generally, all previously unknown SMTP servers are considered gray. Mail from them is not accepted, but it is not rejected completely either - a temporary error code is returned to them. If the sender retries after a certain period, the server is entered into White list. Thus, normal letters are not lost, but are only delivered with some delay. This method is currently quite effective, and the risk of losing important mail is minimal. However, it also cannot be called perfect. The third way to filter out spam is to receive confirmation from the sender. That is, upon arrival of a letter from a certain address, a request is sent in response with a request to confirm the sending. Then, if the server receives confirmation, the address is whitelisted and not checked further. Main disadvantage this method It is impossible to work fully automatically, without human intervention, besides, it drastically reduces the speed of delivery of letters and creates certain inconveniences for senders. In addition to the main methods described above, there are many others: refusal to accept correspondence with an incorrect return address (letters from non-existent domains), analysis of message headers, systems for determining signs of a mass message, and others. Unfortunately, on this moment there are no programs that would allow you to filter spam with 100% accuracy.

And finally

Although e-mail is currently the main source of spam, advertising mailings via instant messaging systems, primarily ICQ, as well as advertising messages on various forums and blogs, have recently become increasingly popular. Perhaps soon we will tell you more about this type of unfair advertising and how to deal with it.

Spam is something that every web user is familiar with.

In the most common sense, spam is the mass mailing of promotional emails to users who have not given their consent.

Now spam has many more meanings and variations: SMS spam, social media spam, and so on. But let's start with the origin of the word itself.

Term

The very word "spam", or rather the English version of "spam" has a rather funny origin. SPAM is originally a trademark of an American company; under this brand in 1936, canned meat began to be produced, which during the Second World War was produced so much that it was necessary to urgently carry out an advertising campaign - it was necessary to sell them before the expiration date. These canned goods were advertised everywhere, advertising was also broadcast on the radio.

This situation was played up in one of the episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus, and the word SPAM acquired its current meaning in 1986, when many identical messages advertising a financial pyramid appeared.

Now the amount of spam varies from year to year. For example, in 2017, the share of spam in total mail traffic accounted for slightly more than half, 56.63%; while the largest amount of spam (more than 13%) came from the United States.

Types of spam

1. Bulk mailing- the most famous type of spam. Spammers buy databases of email addresses and then send emails with commercial offers (which most often contain viruses, phishing, and so on).
2. Messages in social networks and instant messengers. Previously, these were the same advertising messages as in letters, but now a scheme is becoming popular when a user's account is hacked, and then messages are sent on his behalf with a request to transfer a certain amount of money.
3. Spam on forums. Spammers are also active on forums: they leave messages in discussions and send private messages to users. Sometimes this is used to build the link mass of a site.
4. Spam in website comments. The type of spam that website owners hate the most. The goal of spammers is still the same - either to advertise their products or services, or to increase thematic citation index(TIC).
5. Spam in directories and bulletin boards. Directories are used to promote sites (although less so now) and message boards are used for fraudulent ads.
6. Spam by SMS. Just like sending emails, spammers buy user databases mobile operators and send spam messages of an advertising or fraudulent nature.

Safe and dangerous spam

Spam messages can be divided into two large groups- safe and dangerous. The former are unpleasant, but threaten only with a spoiled mood and a waste of time, but the latter can harm the computer and finances.

Safe Spam

1. Advertising legal goods or services. These are ordinary advertising letters, with the difference that users did not give their permission to receive them.
2. Advertising goods or services prohibited by law. If the law prohibits advertising a product or service, then spammers begin to actively use mailing lists, they have nothing to lose.
3. Compromising letters. May be related to politics; are sent with the aim of discrediting competitors, and can also be sent ostensibly on behalf of competitors in order to change their opinion for the worse.
4. "Letters of Happiness" Messages (including in messengers) with a request to forward the text to other users so that something good happens or something bad does not happen. Sometimes such letters are used by spammers to collect a database of addresses for subsequent mailings.

Dangerous spam

In general, spam is not a harmless thing, so any messages that look like spam should be treated very carefully.

How to deal with email spam

In order to minimize the amount of spam in your mail, you need to start by understanding whathow users get on mailing lists.

1. Carelessness when registering on the site. Often, in the registration form, there is already a checkmark right away - consent to receive promotional materials. However, it is not difficult to refuse spam in this case: at the end of each letter there should be an “Unsubscribe” link.
2. Breaking. Fraudsters hack into users' websites and emails and gain access to databases (contacts).
3. Sale. Address bases, unfortunately, are sometimes sold by site employees themselves.
4. Phishing. The user enters their data on fake sites.

What to do?

The main advice, which has repeatedly shown its effectiveness:

register at least two email addresses. One for personal and work contacts, and the second for registration on commercial sites, sites with questionable content, and so on.

The next tip is to choose a reliable mail service (for example, gmail ). Spam filtering works well in such mail services, so most of the fraudulent emails will go straight to the Spam folder.

If some letter nevertheless "broke" into the main folder with letters, be sure to mark it as spam - all further letters from this user will go there.

You can also use filters and create rules to get rid of spam (for example, in Yandex mail).

Conclusion

Spam is a serious problem - mainly because of the dangerous links and files that can be inside the email, spam is a serious problem, especially for inexperienced users. Therefore, even if you are sure that you will never fall for the bait of scammers, be sure to tell your family and friends about the dangers.

Hello, dear readers of the blog site. I assume that most of you understand the meaning of the word “spam” at least in general terms and have repeatedly had the dubious pleasure of encountering this phenomenon, although, I admit, not everyone is fully aware of how deeply it has penetrated into our lives .

After all, spam is not only annoying emails from advertising mailing lists that come to email without your consent, as well as messages of the same nature that appear everywhere on the Internet, and more specifically, in forums, chats, comments on websites and blogs.

Spam is also actively manifested offline, for example, when advertising leaflets fall into your regular mailbox or a phone call is heard from an agent trying to offer the services of one or another mobile operator.

What is spam and who are spammers

Where did this term come from? According to one version, it came from the product name of the same name ( SP iced h AM), which in English means canned spicy ham, which was supplied to the US Army and its allies during World War II.

At the end of active hostilities, huge stocks of these canned food remained, which the manufacturer had to urgently sell. To this end, an unprecedented advertising campaign was carried out, during which the word "SPAM" was present absolutely everywhere: at all bus stations, facades of shops and residential buildings, in newspapers and magazines, messages regarding these products were broadcast on the radio.

With the advent of the World Wide Web, or rather, with the advent of active monetization on the Internet, this long history was remembered, and since then all advertising materials of an aggressive nature, messages and mailings sent to users without their consent, began to be named after that famous ham, which has become a household name . It is quite logical that spammers are called "spammers".

The methods and directions of sending spam on the Internet can be different. The most profitable place for spammers, where they send unsolicited messages, are e-mail addresses because in this way they cover a huge number of people.

They also operate on social networks (for example, VK and Odnoklassniki), as well as on forums, in comments on various web resources, etc. As I have already said, spam is also relevant in real life, when advertising agents call you on your phone or you receive SMS of the corresponding content on your mobile phone.

Of course, modern technologies allow the use of very effective means of protecting against spam on the Internet (we will discuss them in more detail below), therefore, in the overwhelming majority of cases, using the same filters, it is possible to filter out unwanted messages.

However, keep in mind that spammers also use advanced technical equipment in the form of programs (bots) capable of automating the sending process.

As a result, even though only a tiny percentage of all sent spam messages reach users, those that receive close attention are not so few in absolute terms, and this already promises a benefit (its size depends on the form and content of the message), including financial.

Now let's organize the information ways to send spam(that is, places where you can leave comments or send a message):

• Email— a real goldmine for those who set out to spam big. As already noted, it is this channel that allows you to "get through" to maximum number people, using mailing lists, bombarding them with links leading, among other things, to dubious resources, extorting confidential information or infecting computers with viruses;
• social networks- here very often there are personal messages and comments on posts and announcements containing spam;
• forums, bulletin boards, websites, blogs- also do not deprive the opportunity to spam those who wish. This is not always advertisements, very often webmasters try to post a link to their site to increase its link mass;
• messengers(Viber, WhatsApp, Skype, etc.) - all these modern means of communication also do not stand aside;
• SMS to mobile phone from unidentified persons, whom I think everyone has encountered to one degree or another.

A separate line is Search spam, which manifests itself in different ways, but has a purpose, which is to try to deceive search engines.

These can be different pages of the same resource, "inflated" keywords, as well as doorways (one-pagers specially tailored for one or more requests in order to get into the TOP search results and redirecting visitors to other sites). In this regard, it would not be out of place to mention satellites with little useful content and an excess of advertising, the main task of which is to promote the main web resource.

Ultimately, the average user suffers, hoping to get high-quality and useful information by the entered search query, but in fact seeing links to "garbage" sites, which are filled with TOP-10 search results.

Types of regular and dangerous spam on the Internet

Since it is email that is the most tasty morsel, allowing maximum coverage of Internet users, in the future, when describing the types of spam in this article and the degree of danger that each of them poses, we will rely on email addresses as the main area of ​​activity of spammers.

In order to fully understand how harmful and dangerous spam is in its various manifestations, it is worth mentioning the goals pursued by spammers. Conventionally, these goals can be divided into three main categories, each of which has its own characteristics:

In the same category, you can include various newsletters with affiliate links to attract referrals to any of the projects. Almost the same task is performed by the letters coming to the email containing links for visitors to go, which can lead to an increase in traffic and popularity of the website, community in social networks, etc.

2. Decreased reputation of a competitor. This goal is achieved by a method consisting in the fact that on behalf of a competing company, spam mailings are made.

As you know, the vast majority of users are extremely negative about spam in any form, so it is possible to undermine the reputation of an undesirable project in this way. Of course, this method does not always work one hundred percent, and in the case of a popular brand, it can even have the opposite effect, but still ...

3. Fraudulent purpose is to get personal data from a person in one way or another and, as a result, "divorce him for money."

Next, consider the main types of spam, each of which has one of the purposes described above. Let's start with the most common, which, nevertheless, also cause a lot of trouble, and finish with the most dangerous, capable of bringing a person to extremes.

Standard spam options

• legal advertising- companies engaged in legitimate business, as one of the components, use mailing lists unauthorized by users in which they advertise their goods and services, since this is cheap and often brings results. Of course, there is a moral aspect that is simply neglected in this case;
• illegal advertising- in this case, spam is almost the only channel through which you can advertise products prohibited by law, including pornographic materials, medicines with a limited distribution area, counterfeit software, etc.;
• manipulation of public opinion- mailing lists are often used to influence people's opinions regarding third parties. A very convenient means of discrediting the objectionable both in the field of politics and commerce;
• chain letters(Chain Letters) - messages that encourage the recipient to send it to their friends or acquaintances. One of their varieties are the so-called "letters of happiness", familiar, I think, to many. Previously, they were distributed offline via regular mail. Nowadays, such mailings are used by spammers on the network, among other things, to replenish the email database in order to organize further mailings of a different nature.

All the types of spam we have just considered do not explicitly encroach on the financial well-being of users, although they cause a lot of inconvenience, but the following variations represent real threat so pay special attention to them.

Especially dangerous spam - what is it?

Phishing- a very effective means of deceiving and extorting money from gullible citizens. Specifically, it is used by spammers to try to find out confidential information (credit card numbers, passwords for accessing financial online services etc.).

The usual scheme is simple, here is an example: it is reported that you have serious problem with your WebMoney account, to solve which you need to follow the link provided in the letter and log in by entering your .

The site you go to turns out to be with all the ensuing consequences: after entering the data, the scammers get access to your wallet and blatantly steal the funds located there.

Fraudsters of this kind are savvy in terms of psychology, therefore they competently compose messages, which usually contain fairly truthfully presented information that you are lucky to win a large sum in the lottery or got a fabulous inheritance from a suddenly deceased distant relative.

To get a win or an inheritance, you need to transfer some money for overhead, which is the goal of the attackers. Be sure that after the transfer of the named amount, no one will bother you anymore, but you will not receive any promised "golden mountains".

Letters with viruses— a type of mailing that may contain an installation file of a malicious program (trojan or worm) or a link to a site with some kind of malicious virus. It is clear that such software is designed to scan the personal data you enter, as a result of which fraudsters gain access to your accounts and accounts.

How to effectively deal with spammers

First, let's find out how spammers get working email addresses to include them in the database and set up mass mailing. There are several ways to do this:

• scanning HTML pages of websites using specially designed bots. Most resources have a section containing a list of contacts, among which, with a high degree of probability, there is an e-mail address;
• automatic generation of names of electronic mailboxes using the same software and dictionaries. Among the huge number of potential addresses received, there is a fair amount of real ones;
• spammers can also extract emails from the public, including available sources in the form social networks, forums, chats, guest books, etc.;
• with the help of malicious programs (worms) embedded on the computer of the victim, which scan the e-mail addresses located there;
• extraction of existing databases of emails by hacker methods or their banal purchase.

Although I noted that only dangerous types of spam are the real threat, standard spam is not completely harmless either.

He causes significant damage not only to ordinary users who have to spend a lot of time processing completely unnecessary information and separating the wheat from the chaff, but also to mail server providers who have to put up with an additional load on communication channels, which is very significant, given the mass mailings. In view of the above, it's time to analyze the methods of protecting spammers.

It must be understood that anyone who does not just surf the Internet, but is active in the network, and, therefore, certainly has one or more emails, will not be able to stay completely away from their influence.

If you study the problem on behalf of a simple user, then the surest way to avoid spam is not to publish your email address anywhere, which is almost impossible. However, it can be very significantly reduce the likelihood of your email getting into the spam database ate to follow some simple rules:

• while creating mailbox choose for yourself the most complex and long address;
• to register on the services, use not the main email, but a specially created for these purposes or even a temporary one, which you will not use in the future;
• unnecessarily do not leave an email address on sites in the public domain;
• do not click on links in spam emails;
• turn off images if possible mail client, which you use if it is not provided in the default settings.

These are the precautions that will help you in the fight against spam. However, the most effective method of protection, in my opinion, is the use of large and well-known mail services (such as GMail and Yandex Mail), where Antispam filters:

All suspicious correspondence is immediately filtered and placed in the Spam folder, clearing the Inbox section. Of course, it is practically impossible to create a perfect filtering mechanism, so it is recommended to check the contents of the spam folder from time to time, as it may contain some quite "clean" messages. But this, nevertheless, takes much less time than the daily manual sorting of all messages.

And now a video that talks about how to actually set up filters to filter out unwanted emails in your account on popular email services.

Spam is the distribution of letters of an advertising nature of a political or commercial nature to those people who did not subscribe to it. Spam refers to emails received on the user's email, phone, social applications like whats app, skype and many others. Main theme emails can be different: from visiting a resort to offering to earn big money or receive a prize for some action that the user has never done.

The first episode of spam took place in the nineteenth century. In 1864, British politicians received telegraphs advertising dental services. In the twentieth century, a similar term was used as a trademark of Hormel Foods Corporation. it was an abbreviation SPAM stands for SPiced hAM, which means "spicy ham" in translation. After the war, advertisements about the remaining unused canned food were broadcast at every step - from the radio, newsstands, on trams and buses. There was a sketch called "SPAM" on a television show in Britain. Hence the modern name.

Sometimes spam from harmless letters turns into a real black PR. For example, with its help, one company can denigrate another by sending to Internet users, telephones, some messages discrediting the reputation of the latter. With the help of such mailings, pornography, drugs and much more is advertised, which is prohibited by law.

Disguised as spam extortion of money. For example, a woman receives a message in the mail that her son had an accident and asks to send money for a complex operation and a number where savings should be sent. Those women who have never experienced such actions believe and send money. And then it turns out that the son is healthy and nothing happened to him. More details about the types will be discussed below.

Types of spam

The most common type is advertising. With the help of advertising, companies sell services, offer goods. Such advertising is permitted at the legislative level. But many recipients are still wary.

Another type are Nigerian letters". The name was formed due to the fact that a large number of such messages were received in Nigeria. The recipient of such a letter is promised a large amount of money, but it is necessary to arrange the opening of an account, shipping costs, which the fraudster will allegedly pay only when the recipient sends the money to him.

Almost the same in appearance is phishing". Allegedly, the bank administration will block the recipient's account if he does not send his details and confirm the data on the site, under which the link of the spammer site is hidden. Thus, the scammers will receive all the necessary data in order to transfer the money in the recipient's account to themselves.

happiness letters, common among schoolchildren and the adult population, in our country are also one of the varieties. They are based on the requirement to send a message to as many friends as possible. And in return, a miracle will happen in the life of the recipient in a few days. Sometimes such messages may contain a negative character. For example, to threaten punishment from heaven if a person does not forward a certain number of letters to friends.

All these legal and illegal actions are committed by people who are called spammers. They can be mailers, database collectors, software vendors, and even the average user. If a person wants to report something to many people without their request or consent, he automatically becomes a spammer.

This type of mailing brings benefits to customers of letters. Fighting this species is difficult, but possible.

How to deal with spam

You can deal with mailings yourself. If you often receive messages from a particular group or user, you can always add a person to black list and make sure that messages get into a specially designated block. On the site mail.ru, or Yandex.Mail, it is called "Spam".

For a user who wants to protect himself from spammers, Not recommended publish your mailing address on public websites. Or create a special box if you have to register in unreliable groups and communities. Not recommended reply to messages like this or follow the links in them. Perhaps a script is already hidden in the link that will block your computer or phone at best. At worst, it will get access to your cards and bank accounts.

There are special software, which protects against annoying mailings. Typically, such anti-spam modules are built into the anti-virus or installed separately. Kaspersky Lab, Antispamus, Counterspam are the best of these programs.

In phones, it is recommended to blacklist such senders. Letters will be coming in separate block under the name "Antispam" in the phone. And the recipient, if he wants, can look, if not, he can put on automatic deletion after a certain number of days.

You can find examples below in the pictures. Such are harmless mailings are also called spam on the Internet.

These are examples of mailings from ordinary users. There are entire companies, for example, computer repair, window installers, that do this kind of mailing, inserting links to their pages in usernames or in words. Below is an example:

What to do with spam emails

Why spam is dangerous

First of all, it is dangerous because in a pile of various mailing lists you will have to look for a really useful letter from a friend or worker for a long time. By opening a spam email and clicking on a link, you expose yourself and your corporate network to various viruses. Thirdly, the additional load on the network.

Everyone with email has experienced spam. Spam- this is a mass anonymous mailing of advertising that does not have the consent of the recipient.

Usually these ads are sent from different computers through a spam network. At the same time, the owners do not always know that spam is being sent from their PC, and the recipients, in turn, usually ignore the incoming ads and simply delete them.

What is internet spam

In world wide web spam is ubiquitous:

• when searching for the necessary information;
• communicating in social networks;
• when downloading an interesting movie, etc.

Why is spam dangerous? The answer will be: because he is the culprit of numerous troubles. Firstly, it can cause virus infection. Secondly, spam emails create huge traffic, thereby overloading the network resource: internet starts to slow down, and users have to overpay for traffic.

In addition, spam interferes with the viewing of the material of interest, with its help, fraudulent letters are distributed, which are of two types:

• Nigerian- a request for help, usually financial, for an operation, etc. The name came from the large distribution of similar letters in the African state of the same name.
• Phishing(from English - fishing) - pursue the goal of extorting data on bank accounts, credit cards etc. Moreover, the design of these letters can exactly repeat the style of your bank, and the name differs by one or two letters. You should be very vigilant when receiving this kind of correspondence.

Main varieties

1. Pop-up spam ads on some sites. This brings income to the author of the resource.
2. Spam mailing - repeated sending of messages to e-mail (the main source of the described problem). Often the reader subscribes to the newsletter in order to receive information of interest to him. If you encounter spammers, ads will come daily and off topic.
3. Guestbooks on some sites are also clogged spam ads. They can also be found in comments to content on blogs or forums. These are general comments (for example, this is a useful article) containing a link to another resource.
4. Spam is also present on bulletin boards, forums and chat rooms.
5. Invisible text. In order to increase site traffic, sometimes cunning webmasters try to fool search engines around their fingers. To do this, they fill their project with popular words with a font color that matches the background of the resource. Thus, the user will not see it. Because of this, often when you enter a query in the search box, you can often find completely incomprehensible pages in the results.
6. Spam in social networks is distributed through private messages. Often, attackers steal an account and send a newsletter from it to the friends of the person from whom they stole it.
7. Mobile fraud in SMS messages. Mobile operators even created a blacklist of such SMS.

How to deal with spam

To get rid of spam email, you need to cancel subscription. Usually this feature is provided at the end of the letter, but not always. If this feature is not available, you will need to mark annoying messages as spam yourself. To do this, check the box next to unwanted emails and click on the "This is spam" menu.

Everything selected is automatically moved to the Spam folder. This folder can be cleared manually, if this is not done after 30 days, the messages are deleted automatically. The mail server, in turn, remembers the unscrupulous sender. Now almost all major companies have these anti-spam filters. mail services(Yandex.Mail, Gmail, etc.).

If possible, delete (manually or using plugins) your comments on suspicious sites.

Avoid questionable resources with a lot of pop-ups. These steps will help you avoid infecting your computer with a virus.

Never respond to such correspondence, do not click on the links contained in it, and do not give permission to download a picture, because your address is immediately marked as active in the spam network. If this is not done, unexpected advertising will only increase in the future.

Important point! The problem can become uncontrollable after the user's email address gets into the spam database. To prevent this, you should adhere to the following rules:

• Create two addresses: public - for public sources (chats, forums), private - for personal correspondence.
• The mail password and address should be heavy and long.
• To register in online stores and other resources, use your public address.
• Use modern anti-spam filters (on your computer or with the help of an ISP).
• Modern anti-virus programs are also equipped with spam protection.

Outcome

The topic of spam is very relevant. Bulk mailing can bring a lot of trouble for an ordinary Internet user and a simple owner of a web resource. By following a few simple simple rules, you can prevent mailbox clogs.

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