1. Liliana Hilda Caggiano
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In 1937, the Hormel Foods Corporation (USA) started selling minced sausage made from out-of-date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 advertising 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.
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 advertising 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

2. 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.