Surely everyone at least once in their life came across spam. He sprinkles with enviable regularity on us, not only from the World Wide Web, but also in real life. The same countless leaflets in the mailboxes on the porch annoy almost everyone. In the age of computer technology, the quality and characteristics of spam have changed markedly. It is no longer necessary to hire offline couriers, but just find out your email address. In addition to the innocuous advertising of local stores with beautiful images of products and reviews written to them, spam can be a real threat to your wallet. So with such letters you need to be extremely careful. But first things first.
From our article you will learn what is the essence of spam, what types of mailings are and how to deal with it.
Types of spam
The essence of spam is to convey the advertised product to the end user. And it does not have to be a product from the store. Some are increasing the traffic to their sites, others are using referral systems, still others are spreading the virus code, others are warning us about the next end of the world, etc. There can be a lot of motives, varieties and, at the same time, examples of spam.
Email
Today it is the most common type of spam. Everyone who is connected to the World Wide Web has e-mail. Without it, it is impossible to register on social networks and on other sites. Mail helps you communicate with friends, conduct business correspondence, share files, etc.
Most users check their email inbox every day, and some more often. Accordingly, letters arriving at the post office are likely to be read at least within a day. Spammers understand this very well and use the appropriate tools for their newsletters.
One of the most common examples of spam messages is a tempting offer to get rich quick. The attachment may include graphs, screenshots of payments, videos and reviews of individuals who have already tried this service. Naturally, all this information is fake, although it sometimes looks quite convincing.
Many large mail services such as Gmail, Yahoo or Yandex, taking into account the numerous examples of spam advertising, create their own filters and actively deal with garbage in users' electronic mailboxes. Nevertheless, this still does not stop spammers, and they continue their ignoble business.
Social networks
Many vivid examples of spam text can be seen on social networks. The services VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, Instagram, Facebook and others are already thoroughly spammed with messages, fake groups and other harmful advertising elements.
At first, businessmen distributed the texts they needed through personal messages directly from their accounts. But ordinary users, along with moderators, began to actively combat this phenomenon. Spammers were not long in coming and began to use another, more stringent technology.
They began to hack into ordinary accounts using phishing sites (fake resources that duplicate any social network) and from them sent their messages to the owner’s friends and subscribers. In this case, you can disable spam only by deleting a “hacked” friend from your contacts.
Forums
Forums are a series of specific resources that are configured for some users to communicate with others. Some sites allow you to exchange not only text information, but also transfer some files: images, video, audio, and more.
There are plenty of opportunities for publicity for their products or services. Examples of spam are also missing. The user can leave the necessary links or other references both in his profile, which is displayed on the site, and in the discussion threads. Spammers create a seemingly normal topic in a decent forum, but only to stuff it with their links.
The administrators of such resources try to deal with such harmful elements in various ways: include comment moderation, wrap texts in nofollow tags, bany and delete suspicious accounts, etc. Some admins write or order special scripts that contain various examples of spam, and if any , then delete the message or immediately - the user who left it.
Comments on sites
Here we are talking about different thematic resources and blogs. Fraudsters also actively use similar sites for their dirty business. Among other examples of spam, we can single out the separate and largest category of businessmen in this segment who advertise their own sites and blogs, leaving comments with links under posts.
This is necessary to raise the ICS indicator (site quality index, former TIC). The latter contributes to good search results, as well as monetization of the resource. It’s easier to deal with such spam than in other cases. Here, the moderation of comments is a panacea. Also helps ban users by IP address and the use of advanced captcha.
Catalogs and bulletin boards
Approximately the same situation as with the comments on the site occurs on bulletin boards. A striking example is the large Avito resource, where literally every section contains spam in various forms.
It can be in the ads themselves, or in ad units on the side or bottom. Avito is wildly popular in Russia, and you can pay for a banner that contains supposedly ordinary advertising, but in reality it is spam. In addition, moderators can’t cope with thousands of ads and cannot guarantee the absence of links and any references to third-party resources with a 100% probability.
SMS
Mobile gadgets are also an expanse for scammers. Spam viruses are very common here, and they are extremely harmless in nature. Some SMS can easily reset the balance of your phone or even worse - a bank card.
Fraudsters go to different tricks, achieving their goals. Out of thousands of SMS sent to various numbers, at least one “shoots”. As a rule, spammers are asked to send a response message by veiling it under a harmless procedure. For example, confirm that you are not a robot by sending SMS to a short number. Large and reputable services and companies may be indicated as a sender: Sberbank, Gosulugi, RIA-Novosti, the same Avito and others.
How spammers form their bases
Fraudsters collect email addresses and phone numbers from all available sources. Among others, thematic forums, guest books, social networks and other resources are especially popular where such information is poorly protected or even in the owner’s profile in the public domain. Some bases hack hackers and sell them at Darknet.
In addition, personal information may be collected programmatically. There are special search bots - harvesters. They go through thousands of resources in an hour and neatly put all the received data into a database.
It is also worth taking into account the usual selection. Billions of mailboxes are registered all over the world, which means that using a specially written program you can generate these addresses. The same is true for phones. It is no secret that for each Russian region, operators have allocated their own codes indicating the number belongs to. For example, +7 (918) xxx-xx-xx - this is the Krasnodar Territory with the Rostov Region. The fraudsters are left to generate the remaining seven digits and spam evil already taking into account the specifics of a particular region.
Helps dishonest dealers and viruses. Malicious code, usually worms, can send itself to the address database. The information collected in this way is extremely valuable for spammers, because it contains only the working data that their owner uses.
How to get rid of spam?
Here we will consider the situation with e-mail, because inbox spamming is the main headache for most network users. Once your e-mail got into the database of scammers, just like that, they will not leave you behind.
Nevertheless, it is possible to significantly reduce the likelihood of being on such a list if simple precautionary measures are taken. Experienced users strongly recommend that in addition to the main mailbox, there is also an additional, and preferably a few. The latter can and should be used to register on forums and other sites where an email address is required.
The next point is suspicious letters. If you are asked to follow an unfamiliar link in order to receive a reward, complete registration, buy a yacht for a couple of thousand or something else, although you have not visited this site before, it is better to immediately delete the letter. It should also be noted that some scammers put the virus code on the "Unsubscribe" button.
New email account
If you are going to have a new mailbox, then you should not choose a simple and easy to remember name for it. Make it as complex, confusing, and long as possible. Memorable boxes are good for companies and other services, but for the average user they are completely useless.
You will still send it to your friends electronically by copying the address. But spam bots will be noticeably harder to generate such a complex name.
Mail services
Judging by the numerous user reviews from all over the world, the most interesting service in terms of spam filtering is Gmail. Local protection is quite sensible and it is extremely rare to make mistakes.
Anti-spam filters place all suspicious correspondence in the appropriate category, thereby freeing the Inbox from unnecessary advertising junk. Of course, this tool is far from ideal, but nevertheless it works much more efficiently in contrast to competing analogues.
It is also worth noting the domestic service - Yandex.Mail. Local filters very efficiently sort letters by sifting grain from the chaff. But many advanced users complain about the domestic mailer for the abundance of ad units. Yes, it cleans up a wide variety of spam, but the banner there and the banner here spoil the whole impression, and some of them get in the way.
In any case, if you have an e-mail registered on some third-party service, then in Gmail you can configure the interception of correspondence from any electronic mailbox that supports this function.