Definition:
Spammers are people or companies that perform spam. Spam stands for Shoulder of Pork Ham, which was a canned meat marketed by hormel Foods. However, today Spam comes to mean something else entirely. It refers to email that is annoying, that we do not want to receive and that is usually of low quality.
The change of meaning occurs around the 90s. The relationship between both aspects has a clear link with a Monty Python’s sketch. The sketh has a restaurant where the waitress constantly repeats the entire menu, where there is canned meat (SPAM) and where a group of Vikings does not stop repeating the word SPAM.
The word began to use, first of all, in the digital world especially chats to refer to users who advertised repetitive products or services.
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Who was the first Spammer?
Gary Thuerk is considered to be the first spammer. Gary Thuerk was a publicist for Digital Equipment Corporation. He sent the first spam in 1978 by sending 400 recipients from a list of 2600 via ARPAnet. He sold DEC computers and his spam worked, as he made $13 billion in revenue.
How do Spammers work?
Its function / objective is to send mass emails trying to mask their origin and using techniques to avoid anti-spam filters. A very common technique is to appear to be a reputable company or company to reach users. An example would be that we receive the email from our bank saying that they have canceled our account and if we want to recover it we must enter a link. The bank would not be the one that is sending it and that person would be receiving the information that interests him.
How do you get email addresses?
Spammers use various techniques to obtain email addresses to send spam:
- Tracking robot that inspects web pages for texts with email address.
- Through pages that are of dubious content and that usually ask you for an email so that you can download a content.
- Through the use of deductive emails or that are certainly logical. In other words, emails that use very generic words such as info, webmaster…
- Through mailing lists.
- Through emails that ask you to forward it to other users or to a certain number of users.
- Using practices of an illegal nature.
- Random submissions. It’s trial and error. If we send the email and the email does not exist, on the other hand, if it does not come out, we already have a valid email that can be spammed.
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