Meaning of spam (what is it, concept and definition)

What is Spam:

Spam is a term of English origin in which it refers to an unwanted, unsolicited electronic message with an unknown sender, sent to a large number of users. The content of a spam is usually advertising in order to publicize a product or service of a company.

The term spamming is the action of sending electronic messages and spammer is the designation given to its author. Spam can be carried out through different channels, either: social networks, forums, blogs, web pages, among others, and the most widely used is email. Despite the fact that these spam are generally of advertising types, there are other types of spam such as viruses and filtered pages that are activated when entering the page and, sometimes without the need to access the page.

Similarly, there are other types of spam with malicious objectives, such as: messages that seek the user to publish their personal or bank account information, some messages encourage the user to forward it to their contacts to expand the database spammer email data, among others.

The relevant features of spamming are the sending of messages to a large number of users at the same time and the absence of the recipient's authorization to use their email. In relation to this, Mexico has the Federal Law on Consumer Protection, which contemplates that emails sent for advertising purposes must contain: name, address, telephone number, email of the provider or the company that sends the email of the provider, also, the supplier must respect the consumer's decision regarding the quantity and quality of products that he wishes to receive or not to receive any commercial notice. In the case of non-compliance with the regulations, the creditor may be fined under the amount that the authority considers.

Also, it is of utmost importance that the users who receive the email have the facility to unsubscribe (usually it is at the end of the email), since otherwise the company can damage their image and be seen as spammers . Unsubscribe is an option for users to exit an email list.

The word spam was to designate a product, specifically a corned beef, it was the food of Soviet and British soldiers in World War II. Later, this term came to designate spam by a humorous sketch by the British group Monty Phyton where the word spam was repeated incessantly and, as a result, someone branded the spam as spam.