The Dangers of Spam
Email
Email is now a key means of communication
both for business and pleasure. It has shrunk the world, with people
able to communicate with each other in seconds, rather than the
days or weeks conventional mail took.
As with conventional mail though, the marketing enthusiasts
have seized the opportunity and bombard us with junk email or
Spam.
Spam
by definition is unsolicited email and the name orginates from
the Monty
Python Sketch featuring the Vikings singing Spam, Spam Spam.
Spam Emails vary from being innocuous to offensive, pornographic
or down right dangerous. Phishing Spam which
tries to steal funds from your bank is obviously to be avoided.
More and more the criminally inclined are using Spam to
distribute new Zero-Hour Viruses. These Zero-Hour Viruses
are targetted viruses designed to capture control of PC's before
any anti-virus company can detect or stop them. When some hours
later the AV companies have updated their program, the Virus developer
just stops publishing that virus and launches a new Zero-Hour Virus
attack. |