Everyone is familiar with the word ‘spam’.  However if you were to define spam, you would find that its boundaries have stretched far beyond just unwanted emails that crowd up your mailbox.  Spamming amounts to abuse and hence very aptly put, spam is created when a messaging system that is electronic is misused.  Even though it is a nuisance to the receivers, spamming is a favorite amongst advertisers as it is an extremely low cost way of making their product or service known when compared to other modes of advertising.

The Various Kinds of Spam

If you were to ask most people to define spam as they know it, it is most likely that they would explain the concept of email spamming.  With the advancement of the electronic medium, spamming has crept into every channel of communication.  Email spamming is still the most common.  Newer additions to this medium include instant messenger spamming, forum and newsgroup spamming, mobile phone spamming, spamming via messages on online game sites, blog and guestbook spamming and targeted spam towards search engines and sites that share videos.

How much does it Cost the Spammer?

If you think about the way we define spam, you would think people resort to it because it is free.  That is definitely not true.  While most advertisers prefer this method, it is not because it is free.  It is simply because the cost of spamming is significantly lower than other advertising means.  If you were to start spamming, all that would be required, in terms of costs, would be overhead (a computer, connection to the Internet, spamming tools and the acquisition of a host), variable costs (management of recipients etc.), risks and possible damage, legal or otherwise.

The Latest Additions to the World of Spam

When we define spam today, it has to be an all inclusive definition.  Like the medium that it is a part of, this definition will undergo a constant change.  The latest additions to the world of spamming now come via blogs in the form of aggregators, standard spam and commercial spam.  Aggregators are blogs that operate by collecting feeds from various blogs and then place them in a random manner.  These blogs do not have any kind of input that is human.  They look like regular blogs but you will find that some of their words are hyperlinks to other sites, generally that of the spammer.  Commercial spam is the spam that promotes products inside of the blog.  You will find that the emails that pile up in your junk folder are often from sites like these.