We explain what Spam is and what purpose this malicious message serves. Also, the different ways to prevent and combat it.
What is Spam?
The term Spam is an English word that refers to junk mail or junk messages on the Internet, that is: unsolicited, unwanted and/or messages with unknown sender sent in large quantities and usually with advertising content. This term has also given rise to the action of spamming and its equivalents in Spanish such as spamming.
The word Spam historically comes from the Second World War, when a famous brand of canned meat bearing that name was massively distributed to Allied soldiers at the front (contraction of Spam). spiced Hamseasoned ham).
The term became popular after British comedians Monty Python used it in 1970 as part of a sketch in which they were served Spam to eat every day, in their series Monty Python's flying Circus.
This is a common practice today, whose First practice took place at the dawn of the Internet, supposedly in 1994 when the law firm Canter and Siegel announced their firm's services through a mass message on Usenet (User's Network).
Other versions claim that in 1978, when the Internet was still for strictly military use (called ARPANET), a massive message from the computer company DEC was leaked promoting its new product.
Spam It is common in any of the current means of electronic communication particularly in electronic mail or e-mail, and in instant messaging services.
This term also serves to refer to viruses and pieces of malicious software that, dispersed on the Internet, bombard the user with misleading advertising, offers of pornography, games of chance, dating sites and other similar services without the user's permission.
Prevention and combat of Spam
The most common recommendations to combat Spam are:
- Use a firewall It is a program that blocks the signals that enter and leave the computer through the Internet, to prevent other users from accessing the information in our system, or that malicious programs can access our connection and spread their seed to our contacts.
- Use antivirus and antimalware There are programs specifically designed to clean viruses and invasive programs (Trojans) from a computer, many of which can be downloaded for free or purchased for little money. Its use is recommended to perform regular computer maintenance or prevent said malicious software from being installed on our system.
- Do not open suspicious messages. Especially those emails whose senders are not known or trustworthy (sometimes it is necessary to carefully check the address from which they write to us), regardless of what it says on the sender. Most infectious emails promise easy money, free services or big surprise prizes. None of that is real.
- Do not fall for misleading online advertising A common way to get infected is by clicking on attractive advertising offers, which usually lead to dead ends and illegally downloading software. You should be wary of offers that seem too good to be true, and under no circumstances should you download or even run unknown software and/or downloaded from suspicious pages.
