What is spam?

Spam is junk email, usually sent in mass quantities. Although some spam may simply be unwanted products or services, most spam is malicious, designed to steal your identity, plant dangerous software on your computer or lure you into a scam.

Why is spam dangerous?

Spam is often for products, services, or opportunities that are worthless, non-existent or dangerous.

• Spam may attempt to sell you illegal or homemade drugs or unknowingly involve you in a criminal enterprise (such as receiving and forwarding merchandise purchased with stolen credit card numbers).
• A large percentage of spam is devoted to identity theft. Victims may be notified of an “urgent account problem” of some sort involving a bank, online merchant or Internet provider. They are directed to a Web site that looks legitimate, but when they enter passwords, account numbers or other identity data, the information is captured and stolen.
• Or, spam may be outright fraud: pyramid schemes, the Nigerian 419 scam or simply stealing the money (and often the credit card numbers) you send them without ever delivering what they promise.

Most email users have received some version of the Nigerian 419 scam (named after the section of the Nigerian Penal Code it violates). An email asks for help in getting a large sum of money out of the country (or claiming an inheritance or lottery prize). Victims have lost tens of thousands of dollars, and have been kidnapped and even murdered.

Why can’t Internet Service Providers block spam?

ISPs block most spam, but, at present, can’t filter out all spam without also blocking an unacceptable number of legitimate messages.

Spammers go to great lengths to evade controls:

• They avoid or disguise hot-button subject lines.
• They use “image spam” – a picture of the text, rather than actual text – to evade content filtering.
• They use bot-nets – remotely controlled PCs they’ve hijacked -- to rapidly move from one host site to another, preventing ISPs from blocking email at the source.

Does Symantec have a product to protect against spam?

Yes. Norton AntiSpam, available as a free add-on to Norton Internet Security and Norton 360 (with valid subscription), automatically filters out annoying and fraudulent emails from your inbox, while allowing you to still receive mail from trusted sources.