Spam emails, also known as junk emails are unwanted and unwelcome messages sent in bulk to millions of Internet users through their email account. If you find your account is regularly receiving messages or information that you never asked for and from sources unknown to you, you are receiving spam emails.

Most spam messages promote products and are commercial in nature. However, irrespective of whether these are commercial or not, spam emails compromise the security of your email account and personal information. In many cases, such emails contain malware in a disguised format that enables spammers to hack information. Spam emails may also contain viruses that can compromise your account wherein all information is susceptible to being completely wiped out. 

In the event of such an unfortunate situation, get in touch with Midas Solutions. We are a South Wales based IT company offering a range of services including disaster recovery. In case your email account has been hacked and you have lost all the important data, we have the expertise to recover them and restore your account.

How Did it all Begin?

Using the Internet to send commercial email to users is prohibited since the very beginning of the Internet (ARPANET; as it was known then).

Even then, the first spam message was sent way back in 1978 to about 600 people. Since then, the volume of spam emails has been rising steadily. It is estimated that by the end of 2014, almost 90% of all email messages received were spam in nature.

Users and Internet Service Providers have been seeking more stringent control methods from the authorities in order to contain spam emails but till date, the problem is yet to be tackled and contained successfully.

How Do Spam Emails Work?

Spammers are forever on the lookout of personal information and email addresses from websites, newsgroups and chat rooms, customer lists of legal business sites and viruses that infect the address list of users. Once the data is collected, they either send the spam emails themselves or sell it to other spammers.

Botnets or networks in computers infected by viruses are used to harvest and send almost 80% of all spam emails. 

There are several categories of spam emails such as phishing, enhancers, replica, spam emails on pharmaceutical products, weight loss and casino and so on. The spam emails contain links to such sites in a disguised manner which makes it look like an authentic mail from a legal enterprise.