Spam is unsolicited bulk electronic communication. It is most often associated with unwanted email, but the term can also cover unwanted text messages, direct messages, comments, forum posts, calls and automated submissions.
Spam can be commercial, political, malicious, fraudulent or simply disruptive. It is not the same as phishing, although phishing messages are often delivered as spam.
Email Spam
Email spam is unwanted email sent at scale. It may advertise products, promote websites, push dubious services, distribute malware, or lead users to phishing pages.
Modern spam campaigns often use compromised accounts, botnets, spoofed senders, disposable domains, link shorteners and copied branding. Some spam is sent by criminal groups, while some is sent by legitimate businesses that ignore or misunderstand marketing rules.
Spam and Phishing
Spam describes the delivery pattern: unsolicited messages sent in bulk. Phishing describes the deception: tricking a person into giving information, sending money or visiting a malicious site.
A message can be both spam and phishing. For example, millions of fake parcel-delivery emails may be spam because they are bulk unsolicited messages, and phishing because they collect payment details.
Malicious Spam
Malicious spam may include links or attachments that install malware, steal credentials or redirect users to cloned websites. It may also be used to test whether an address is active before further targeting.
Security filters, domain authentication, reputation systems and user reporting all help reduce spam, but none removes it completely.
Unsolicited Marketing in the UK
In the UK, unsolicited electronic marketing is regulated by the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, enforced by the Information Commissioner's Office. The ICO explains that PECR restricts unsolicited marketing by phone, fax, email, text or other electronic message, and that the rules are generally stricter for marketing to individuals than marketing to companies.
This does not mean every unwanted message is criminal fraud. Some spam is a regulatory or marketing-compliance issue. Other spam is part of fraud or cyber crime.
Reporting
Suspicious emails can be forwarded to report@phishing.gov.uk. Suspicious text messages can usually be forwarded to 7726. Fraud or cyber crime involving loss of money, hacking, or stolen details can be reported to Report Fraud in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Unwanted marketing calls, texts and emails can also be reported to the ICO where appropriate.
Practical Examples
Marketing Spam
A company sends repeated marketing emails to an individual who never consented and cannot easily unsubscribe. This may raise PECR issues.
Phishing Spam
A bulk email claims to be from a bank and asks recipients to log in through a fake page. That is both spam and phishing.
Forum Spam
Automated accounts post links across a forum to promote scams or search-ranking manipulation. The harm is disruption as well as possible fraud.
See Also
References
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