So, what is Spam? While using IT you most likely will come across the much hated word Spam which is used to describe unsolicited messages, most commonly received via email but you can also be affected by spam on forums, social media and any other online platform where you can view messages from other users.
In most cases Spam will be used for advertising purposes, unfortunately as it costs so little to send electronic messages companies and individuals will send multiple emails to contact details which they did not receive permission to send to on the hope that a small percentage of recipients will buy or look at what they have to offer.
In worse cases Spam can be used for malicious purposes which can be to deceive the reader into either sending money, downloading content, clicking on a link which can enable the sender to extract your data and confidential material such as bank details.
The best advice in regards to spam and to all electronic message in general is if you are not expecting or do not know the sender then do not open up the message as it could contain malicious content. Instead mark the mail/message as Spam/Junk and this will tell the provider of the service you are using to report & block the sender from sending any additional messages.
If you received a message from a contact you know which contains content they would unlikely send, this could be a ploy from a third party that has compromised their account to try and deceive you. In this situation it’s best to make contact to your contact via another method to confirm if they have sent it and if they have not, to inform them that their account has been compromised. Hopefully you are now are able to answer the question, what is spam?
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