Spamming

Phishing is a form of social engineering and a scam where attackers deceive people into revealing sensitive information or installing malware such as viruses, worms, adware, or ransomware. Phishing attacks have become increasingly sophisticated and often transparently mirror the site being targeted, allowing the attacker to observe everything while the victim navigates the site, and traverses any additional security boundaries with the victim. As of 2020, it is the most common type of cybercrime, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Internet Crime Complaint Center reporting more incident

thumb|An email inbox containing a large amount of spam messages

thumb|Stacheldraht botnet diagram showing a DDoS attack (Note this is also an example of a type of client–server model of a botnet.) A botnet is a group of Internet-connected devices, each of which runs one or more bots. Botnets can be used to perform distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, steal data, send spam, and allow the attacker to access the device and its connection. The owner can control the botnet using command and control (C&C) software. The word "botnet" is a portmanteau of the words "robot" and "network". The term is usually used with a negative or malicious connotation.

type of fraud where the victim unknowingly engages in one way trade with the perpetrator

thumb|Telemarketing Telemarketing (sometimes known as inside sales, or telesales in the UK and Ireland) is a method of direct marketing in which a salesperson solicits prospective customers to buy products, subscriptions or services, either over the phone or through a subsequent face to face or web conferencing appointment scheduled during the call. Telemarketing can also include recorded sales pitches programmed to be played over the phone via automatic dialing.

collection of names and addresses used to send material to multiple recipients

computer security mechanism; consists of data that appears to be a legitimate part of the site, but is actually isolated and monitored, and that seems to contain information or a resource of value to attackers, who are then blocked and/or analyzed

the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email

practice that causes a webpage to have a high rank in Google

type of fraud or deception which makes use of the Internet to defraud victims

classification algorithm

nofollow is a setting on a web page hyperlink that directs search engines not to use the link for page ranking calculations. It is specified in the page as a type of link relation; that is: <a rel="nofollow" ...>. Because search engines often calculate a site's importance according to the number of hyperlinks from other sites, the nofollow setting allows website authors to indicate that the presence of a link is not an endorsement of the target site's importance.

distribution of advertising by direct mail or letterbox drop

Spamdexing (also known as search engine spam, search engine poisoning, black-hat search engine optimization, search spam or web spam) is the deliberate manipulation of search engine indexes. It involves a number of methods, such as link building and repeating related or unrelated phrases, to manipulate the relevance or prominence of resources indexed in a manner inconsistent with the purpose of the indexing system.

unsolicited electronic advertising by e-mail

form of business solicitation

A whitelist or allowlist is a list or register of entities that are being provided a particular privilege, service, mobility, access or recognition. Entities on the list will be accepted, approved and/or recognized. Whitelisting is the reverse of blacklisting, the practice of identifying entities that are denied, unrecognized, or ostracized.

thumb | right | alt=A computer CAPTCHA test | A computer CAPTCHA test A spambot is a computer program designed to facilitate spam. Spambots create accounts and usually send unsolicited messages to other users. Web hosts and website operators have banned spammers, resulting in an ongoing battle as spammers try to circumvent bans and anti-spam measures, while hosts work to prevent these tactics.

form of criminal phone fraud, using social engineering over the telephone system to gain access to private personal and financial information for the purpose of financial reward

method using server metrics for a served unobtrusive file to ascertain whether a page has been loaded and by whom

form of securities fraud that involves artificially inflating the price of an owned microcap stock through false and misleading positive statements, in order to sell the cheaply purchased stock at a higher price

computer program for e-mail spam filtering

creating an email spam or phishing messages with a forged sender identity or address

__NOTOC__ thumb|This Siemens M75 is bluejacking the Sony Ericsson K600i pictured below. thumb|This Sony_Ericsson_K600|Sony Ericsson K600i is being bluejacked by the Siemens M75 pictured above. The text at the bottom of the screen reads "Add to contacts?" in Norwegian.

processing of email to organize it according to specified criteria

technique for making a Web page available under more than one URL address

methods, strategies, and techniques to prevent and counter unwelcome mass messaging

Cloaking is a search engine optimization (SEO) technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different from that presented to the user's browser. This is done by delivering content based on the IP addresses or the User-Agent HTTP header of the user requesting the page. When a user is identified as a search engine spider, a server-side script delivers a different version of the web page, one that contains content not present on the visible page, or that is present but not searchable. The purpose of cloaking is sometimes to deceive search engines so they display the pag

method to block host for e-mail spam

group of websites that link to each other

website

method of defending e-mail users against spam

Finnish company

SMTP server that allows anyone to send e-mail through it

web pages that are created for the deliberate manipulation of search engine indexes

blog to increase search rankings

email for only one or very few contacts

Akismet is a service that filters spam from comments, trackbacks, and contact form messages. The filter operates by combining information about spam captured on all participating sites and then using those spam rules to block future spam. Akismet is offered by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com. Akismet was launched on October 25, 2005.

Monty Python sketch

process of obtaining lists of email addresses using various methods, typically for bulk email or spam

type of botnet

UUNET Technologies, Inc., formerly UUNET Communications Services, was an American commercial Internet service provider. Founded in 1987, it was one of the first and largest commercial ISPs and one of the early Tier 1 networks. It was based in Northern Virginia. Today, UUNET is an internal brand of Verizon Business (formerly MCI).

form of spamdexing done by posting random comments, copied material, or promotion of commercial services

Computer botnet

Happy99 (also termed Ska or I-Worm) is a computer worm for Microsoft Windows. It first appeared in mid-January 1999, spreading through email and usenet. The worm installs itself and runs in the background of a victim's machine, without their knowledge. It is generally considered the first virus to propagate by email, and has served as a template for the creation of other self-propagating viruses. Happy99 has spread on multiple continents, including North America, Europe, and Asia.

mechanism whereby one party verifies the purported identity of another party

spam targeting users of instant messaging (IM) services, SMS, or private messages within websites

European Union Directive on the protection of data and privacy of individuals in the electronic communications sector

computer worm

Sality is the classification for a family of malicious software (malware) infecting Microsoft Windows system files. Sality was first discovered in 2003 and has advanced into a dynamic, enduring, full-featured form of malicious code. Systems infected with Sality may communicate over a peer-to-peer (P2P) network to form a botnet to relay spam, proxy communications, exfiltrate sensitive data, compromise web servers, and/or coordinate distributed computing tasks to process intensive tasks (e.g., password cracking). Since 2010, certain variants of Sality have also incorporated rootkit functions as

nonprofit organization

intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual through email

Russian ISP openly engaged in criminal activities

XRumer is a piece of software made for spamming online forums and comment sections. It is marketed as a program for search engine optimization and was created by BotmasterLabs. It is able to register and post to forums (forum spam) with the aim of boosting search engine rankings. The program is able to bypass security techniques commonly used by many forums and blogs to deter automated spam, such as account registration, client detection, many forms of CAPTCHAs, and e-mail activation before posting. The program utilises SOCKS and HTTP proxies in an attempt to make it more difficult for adminis

kind of spamming aimed at search engines

search engine optimization technique in which a keywords are loaded into a web page's meta tags, visible content, or backlink anchor text in an attempt to gain an unfair rank advantage in search engines

incorrectly automated bounce messages sent by mail servers, typically as a side effect of incoming spam

type of email spam

fraud pretending to be a lottery

SpamCop is an email spam reporting service, allowing recipients of unsolicited bulk or commercial email to report IP addresses found by SpamCop's analysis to be senders of the spam to the abuse reporting addresses of those IP addresses. SpamCop uses these reports to compile a list of computers sending spam called the "SpamCop Blocking List" or "SpamCop Blacklist" (SCBL).