Spamming is a term that refers to the mass distribution of unsolicited messages. This practice originated in the late 19th century with Western Union’s telegraphic messages and has since evolved to become a prominent issue across various digital platforms. Spamming is commonly used for commercial publicité[1], phishing, and fraud due to its low operating costs. However, it poses a significant financial burden on the public and Internet[2] Service Providers (ISPs). Various jurisdictions have implemented legislation to combat spamming, such as the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. Technological countermeasures, including anti-spam technologies and collaborations between governments, organizations, and tech companies, have also been developed to tackle this issue. Spamming has broad implications, including financial and legal ramifications. Notable cases of legal action against spamming have occurred worldwide, underlining the seriousness of this issue.
Spamming is the use of messaging systems to send multiple unsolicited messages (spam) to large numbers of recipients for the purpose of commercial publicité, for the purpose of non-commercial proselytizing, for any prohibited purpose (especially the fraudulent purpose of phishing), or simply repeatedly sending the same message to the same user. While the most widely recognized form of spam is email spam, the term is applied to similar abuses in other media: instant messaging spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, Web search engine spam, spam in blogs, wiki spam, online classified ads spam, mobile phone messaging spam, Internet forum spam, junk fax transmissions, social spam, spam mobile apps, television publicité and file sharing spam. It is named after Spam, a luncheon meat, by way of a Monty Python sketch about a restaurant that has Spam in almost every dish in which Vikings annoyingly sing "Spam" repeatedly.
Spamming remains economically viable because advertisers have no operating costs beyond the management of their mailing lists, servers, infrastructures, IP ranges, and domain names, and it is difficult to hold senders accountable for their mass mailings. The costs, such as lost productivity and fraud, are borne by the public and by Internet service providers, which have added extra capacity to cope with the volume. Spamming has been the subject of legislation in many jurisdictions.
A person who creates spam is called a spammer.