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Electronic mail is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email entered limited use in the 1960s, but users could only send to users of the same computer, and some early email systems required the author and the recipient to both be online simultaneously, similar to instant messaging. Ray Tomlinson is credited as the inventor of email; in 1971, he developed the first system able to send mail between users on different hosts across the ARPANET, using the @ sign to link the user name with a destination server. By the mid-1970s, this was the form recognized as email.
Spamming is the use of messaging systems to send an unsolicited message (spam) to large numbers of recipients for the purpose of commercial advertising, for the purpose of non-commercial proselytizing, or for any prohibited purpose. 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 advertising 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 and where vikings annoyingly sing "Spam" over and over again.
A Domain Name System-based Blackhole List, Domain Name System Blacklist (DNSBL) or Real-time Blackhole List (RBL) is a service where with a simple DNS query mail servers can check whether a sending IP address is on a blacklist of IP addresses reputed to send email spam. Most mail server software can be configured to check one or more of such lists - typically rejecting or flagging messages if it is from a listed site.
An email address identifies an email box to which messages are delivered. While early messaging systems used a variety of formats for addressing, today, email addresses follow a set of specific rules originally standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in the 1980s, and updated by RFC 5322 and RFC 6854.
Various anti-spam techniques are used to prevent email spam.
Email spam, also referred to as junk email, is unsolicited messages sent in bulk by email (spamming).
SenderPolicy Framework (SPF) is an email authentication method designed to detect forging sender addresses during the delivery of the email. SPF alone, though, is limited to detecting a forged sender claim in the envelope of the email, which is used when the mail gets bounced. Only in combination with DMARC can it be used to detect the forging of the visible sender in emails, a technique often used in phishing and email spam.
Yahoo! Mail is an email service launched on October 8, 1997 by the American company Yahoo!, now a subsidiary of Verizon. It offers four different email plans: three for personal use and another for businesses. As of January 2020, Yahoo! Mail had 225 million users.
DomainKeys is a deprecated e-mail authentication system designed by Yahoo to verify the domain name of an e-mail sender and the message integrity.
Disposable email addressing, also known as DEA or dark mail, refers to an approach where a unique email address is used for every contact, entity, or for a limited number of times or uses. The benefit is that if anyone compromises the address or utilizes it in connection with email abuse, the address owner can easily cancel it without affecting any of their other contacts.
Email harvesting or scraping is the process of obtaining lists of email addresses using various methods. Typically these are then used for bulk email or spam.
Xtra Limited is New Zealand's largest Internet service provider (ISP). It was founded in 1996 and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Spark New Zealand. Xtra has provided dial-up Internet access throughout New Zealand since its inception in May 1996. In 1999 it created New Zealand's first ADSL service.
The Scunthorpe problem is the unintentional blocking of websites, e-mails, forum posts or search results by a spam filter or search engine because their text contains a string of letters that appear to have an obscene or otherwise unacceptable meaning. Names, abbreviations, and technical terms are most often cited as being affected by the issue.
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) is an email authentication method designed to detect forged sender addresses in emails, a technique often used in phishing and email spam.
The Storm botnet or Storm worm botnet is a remotely controlled network of "zombie" computers that have been linked by the Storm Worm, a Trojan horse spread through e-mail spam. At its height in September 2007, the Storm botnet was running on anywhere from 1 million to 50 million computer systems, and accounted for 8% of all malware on Microsoft Windows computers. It was first identified around January 2007, having been distributed by email with subjects such as "230 dead as storm batters Europe," giving it its well-known name. The botnet began to decline in late 2007, and by mid-2008 had been reduced to infecting about 85,000 computers, far less than it had infected a year earlier.
Srizbi BotNet is considered one of the world's largest botnets, and responsible for sending out more than half of all the spam being sent by all the major botnets combined. The botnets consist of computers infected by the Srizbi trojan, which sent spam on command. Srizbi suffered a massive setback in November 2008 when hosting provider Janka Cartel was taken down; global spam volumes reduced up to 93% as a result of this action.
A feedback loop (FBL), sometimes called a complaint feedback loop, is an inter-organizational form of feedback by which a mailbox provider (MP) forwards the complaints originating from their users to the sender's organizations. MPs can receive users' complaints by placing report spam buttons on their webmail pages, or in their email client, or via help desks. The message sender's organization, often an email service provider, has to come to an agreement with each MP from which they want to collect users' complaints.
The history of email spam reaches back to the mid-1990s when commercial use of the internet first became possible - and marketers and publicists began to test what was possible.
Amavis is an open-source content filter for electronic mail, implementing mail message transfer, decoding, some processing and checking, and interfacing with external content filters to provide protection against spam and viruses and other malware. It can be considered an interface between a mailer and one or more content filters.
References
- ↑ Yodel Anecdotal » Blog Archive » One small step for email, one giant leap for Internet safety
- ↑ U.S. Patent 6,986,049
- ↑ RFC 4871 - The DKIM Base Specification
- ↑ Yahoo! Inc. - Press Release Archived 2008-01-02 at the Wayback Machine
- ↑ "Backing for tool to battle spam". BBC News. 2007-05-24. Retrieved 2008-01-17.
