Articles Contained in SIRS Enduring Issues 2006. Originally Published: Stopping Spam, April 2005; pp. 42-49.
"In 1978 the first spam e-mail--a plug from a marketing representative at Digital Equipment Corporation for the new DEC-system-20 computer--was dispatched to about 400 people on the Arpanet. Today junk correspondence in the form of unwanted commercial solicitations constitutes more than two thirds of all e-mail transmitted over the Internet, accounting for billions of messages every day. For a third of all e-mail users, about 80 percent of the messages received are spam. Recently spam has become more threatening with proliferation of so-called phishing attacks--fake e-mails that look like they are from people or institutions you trust but that are actually sent by crooks to steal your credit-card numbers or other personal information. Phishing attacks cost approximately $1.2 billion a year, according to a 2004 Gartner Research Study." (SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN) The article discusses "what can be done to stanch the flood of junk e-mail messages."
1522-3191;
CAN-SPAM Act (2003)
Computer algorithms Electronic mail messages Electronic mail spoofing Identity theft Internet advertising Junk e-mail Optical character recognition devices