1. What is spam?
If you use email, you’ll have encountered spam. But do you know where the term
comes from, and why it’s used to refer to unwanted email?
‘Spam’ is an acronym derived from the words ‘spiced’ and ‘ham’.
In 1937, the Hormel Foods Corporation (USA) started selling minced sausage made
from out-of-date meat. The Americans refused to buy this unappetizing product. To
avoid financial losses the owner of the company, Mr. Hormel, launched a massive
advertizing campaign which resulted in a contract to provide tinned meat products to the
Army and Navy.
In 1937, Hormel Foods began to supply its products to American and allied troops.
After World War 2, with Britain in the grips of an economic crisis, spam was one of the
few meat products that wasn’t rationed and hence was widely available. George Orwell,
in his book ‘1984’, described spam as ‘pink meat pieces’, which gave a new meaning to
the word ‘spam’ - something disgusting but inevitable.
In December 1970 the BBC television comedy series Monty Python’s Flying Circus
showed a sketch set in a cafe where nearly every item on the menu included spam - the
tinned meat product. As the waiter recited the SPAM-filled menu, a chorus of Viking
patrons drowned out all other conversation with a song repeating "SPAM, SPAM,
SPAM, SPAM... lovely SPAM, wonderful SPAM", hence "Spamming" the dialogue.
Since then spam has been associated with unwanted, obtrusive, excessive information
which suppresses required messages.
In 1993 the term ‘spam’ was first introduced with reference to unsolicited or undesired
bulk electronic messages. Richard Dephew, administrator of the world-wide distributed
Internet discussion system Usenet, wrote a program which mistakenly caused the
release of dozens of recursive messages onto the news.admin.policy newsgroup. The
recipients immediately found an appropriate name for these obtrusive messages – spam.
On April 12 1994, a husband-and-wife firm of lawyers, Canter & Siegel, posted the first
massive spam mailing. The company’s programmer employed Usenet to advertise the
services offered by Canter & Siegel, thus giving a start to commercial spam.

2. Today the word ‘spam’ is widely used in email terminology, though Hormel tinned
meat products are still on sale in the USA.
Types of spam
Spam comes in many different varieties, ranging from advertizing of legitimate goods
and services to political propaganda to Internet scams. Spam worldwide tends to
advertise a certain range of goods and services irrespective of language and geography.
Spammers constantly extend the range of their offers and are always searching for new
ways of attracting unwary users. The list of spam categories is growing. However, when
averaged out over the course of the year, 50% of spam falls into the following
categories:
1. Adult content 4. Personal finance
2. Health 5. Education and training
3. IT
How to reduce spam
Spam isn’t only a nuisance, but can pose a threat to your computer or your data. For
simple, practical guidelines on how you can reduce the amount of spam you receive,
read here. http://www.securelist.com/en/threats/spam?chapter=98