Spam is basically email junkmail. Some spam is merely annoying, such as advertising from a company that sends out unsolicited bulk emails in an attempt to sell you something.
Other spam is more insidious and destructive. Some spam will end up installing a virus on your computer. These viruses can also spread by sending these virus emails to people in your address book, making it look like you sent the email, then spreading the virus to people in their address books, thus spreading the virus very quickly
Other spam, which is called phishing, is actually an attempt to get you to divulge your personal information. Information such as your bank account, credit card information, social security number, your address, or other information can be used for identity theft. In many cases, these phishing emails appear to be from legitimate organizations such as your bank or your credit card company. The people who create these phishing emails can make the email look exactly like the emails that come from the company legitimately by stealing the company’s HTML code. If you receive an email from a company claiming that they need you to re-enter personal information, you should not provide the information. If you are concerned that the problem might be legitimate, you should either call the company or go to that company’s website via its regular web address, which can be found on your monthly statement and not through clicking a link on the email. Contact customer service and ask them about the email you received. In almost all cases, any email that claims it needs this information is a phishing email and should be ignored. Because phishing is such a common and potentially financially devastating type of spam email, most companies, and virtually all financial companies such as banks and credit card companies have a policy of never, ever asking you for any personal or financial information via email. For more information on your bank’s and credit cards’ policies regarding possible phishing emails, contact their customer service department.
Another type of spam is spam that is pornographic in nature. This type of spam can be quite upsetting to some people. It can also be difficult to spot in some cases. It’s easy to spot the vulgar spam that gives you an idea of the topic in the title of the email, but some of this type of spam isn’t apparent until you open the email and are faced with upsetting or inappropriate messages.
No matter what type of spam it is, whether it’s relatively harmless advertisements or possibly destructive or inappropriate spam, dealing with spam takes up your time, your patience and your bandwidth.
