SPAM is acryname of Stupid Pointless Annoying Messages. Spamming is the use of any electronic communications medium such as email, instant message and mobile phone messages to send unsolicited messages in bulk. The most common form of spam is that delivered in e-mail as a form of commercial advertising. However, spammers have developed a variety of spamming techniques, which vary by media: e-mail spam, instant messaging spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, Web search engines spam, weblogs spam, and mobile phone messaging spam. Spam is often used by phishers and pharmers to gather sensitive information from the Internet for personal gains.
Spamming is widely reviled, and has been the subject of legislation in a number of jurisdictions, including the United States' CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.
There are many anti-spam tools available to reduce spam from various channels. Many ISPs and email service providers have implemented anti-spam systems. The techniques used by spammers are evolving, so should be the anti-spam technologies. This is an on-going race. The main anti-spam technologies currently available include:
| First generation | Second generation | Third generation |
| Basic MTA controls | Realtime Black Lists (RBLs) | Artificial intelligence |
| While lists and black lists | Signature networks | Machine learning |
| Keyword searching | Bayesian filtering | |
| Message envelope tests | ||
| Message header tests | ||
| Simple DNS tests |
Related Terms: Spam, Anti-Spam, Phishing