An Overview of Spam

According to the latest survey by M3AAWG, an email metrics measuring firm, for the 30 months preceding June 2014, 87-90% of all emails sent via the world wide web were spam. Because of the nature and circulation of email spam, it has become an ingrained part of navigating online spaces. Email spam, for the purposes of this exploration, is defined as any unwanted and unsolicited email. The name “spam” itself is derived from a Monty Python sketch where a party enters a restaurant to discover they only have the option of being served the canned meat product Spam, a dish they clearly do not want; when they try to protest, they are shouted down by increasingly louder yells of “spam, spam, spam” by other restaurant goers. This absurd comedy sketch illustrates both the frustration of having spam forced upon internet users and the hopelessness of trying to avoid it. Most spam, according to Rao and Reiley, qualifies as illegal (87), but because of the nature of online circulation, differences in laws from country to country, and difficulty in prosecuting so many online agents, this doesn't dampen the amount of unsolicited junk email that circulates.

Spam doesn't need to be effective, either, as the cost of emailing a few thousand users in a matter of moments is almost non-existent. Increasingly sophisticated web-crawling bots can quickly comb open spaces of the web to gather massive lists of email addresses to advance the movements of spammers, who themselves often rely on automated bots to send out their emails. While the majority of email spam is in the form of harmless but annoying advertisements, there also exists a high number of internet scammers who have malicious intentions. Sharing any personal information online can establish a foothold for these spammers to begin targeting individuals for often nasty attacks. Normally, these fall into two criteria meant to hurt the target: phishing attempts, where the spammer sends out emails disguised as a trusting source that attempts to have the target click on a virus or malware that can then direct information to the spammer, or “419” scams where the spammer sends out large swatches of emails offering free money or services in an attempt to deceive those who respond into giving the spammer access to personal information or cash.

This exhibit is organized to focus on three aspects of malicious spam: its circulation, the networks created by its dissemination, and the literacies that surround it.