What is a Spam Email? Here are the 10 Most Common Types

Unsolicited messages sent in bulk are spam emails. Spam emails are also widely referred to as junk mail which is a term derived from receiving actual junk mail in a mailbox. These emails are sent out random list of emails. Spam emails tend to have two main purposes that they are sent out for. The first and most popular reason spam emails are used is for business sales. We have all received promotional offers we don’t remember signing up for, these are in fact spam emails. The Second reason spam email are sent is for malicious attacks. This is how hackers try to gain access to your PC. They send this emails and try to get you to click on a link or download an attachment.

A Quick History and Origin of Spam Emails

If You can believe it the first record spam email was sent way back in 1978! That’s right this is nothing new and the first spam email was sent before it was even called email on May, 3rd 1978. Gary Thuerk sent an advertisement to serval hundred users on ARPANET. ARPANET was what eventually led to the internet we all use today and was run by Defense Communication Agency. Gery was promoting a presentation, this guy was clearly a head of his time!

Little known fact The name comes from a Monty Python sketch in which the name of the canned pork product Spam is ubiquitous, unavoidable, and repetitive.

Where Do Spammers Get Your email?

If you like me and get spam email you have to wonder how are these people getting my emails? Spammers utilize serval techniques and resources to harvest emails for their massive lists. One way they can get your email is by purchasing a list. That’s why I recommend never buying lists. Spammers will aloes use bots to search the internet and scrape email that are listed. They will use viruses to gain access to your contact lists to harvest all of the emails. It’s very important to protect your list and data these days, people are out searching for this type of information.

10 of the Most common Spam Email Types

Now that we have clearly defined what a spam email it, why and who sends spam emails, and a brief history of these emails here are the 10 most common emails that spammers will send you.

1. Product Sales

I am sure you receive lots of product advertainments on a Dailey basis for products you may never have even heard of. This doesn’t mean that this products aren’t real, it doesn’t mean the company marketing them to you isn’t ligament either. This is however considered a spam email.

2. Chain Letters

iA chain letter usually request you to forward the letter to a certain number of people after reading the message it contains. The letter usually tells you how many people to have to forward the letter to to avoid consequences or receive benefits.

3. Email Spoofing

This is basically an email sent that has a forged sender address. This is normally a hacker trying to fool you that they are with a company you trust to try to get you to take some kind of action without thinking like clicking on a link or downloading an attachments.

4. Sham

This type of spam email will make outrageous climes like earn 1000 dollars a day on YouTube in 30 days., rank number 1 on google in 24hrs. The spammer will basically tell you what you want to hear to get you to click on there link and direct you to a malicious website.

5. Nigerian prince scheme.

This is an old one and I can’t believe how many people have fallen for this one over the years. The basics of this spam email is, someone has recently died. The person that died has left the person contacting you a large sum of money. They need you to help get the money out of the country and they will give you a percentage. They just need a small fee up front for the lawyer.

6. Malware Warnings

This is an email you will receive warning you that all of your devises have been infected with malware. The spammer will tell you to click on the link or download an attachment to solve the issue. Some will even try to get you on the phone to get a payment out of you.

7. Lottery Spam

This will be an email stating that you have one the lottery. There will be a link to click or an attachment to download in some cases. In some case the spammers will try to get your personal information. They will then try to get you to pay a fee to claim your winnings.

8 Attempted Delivery

This will be an email claiming your packsack could not be delivered. It will contain a link or an attachment to download to get the tracking number an set up the delivery.

9 Debt Collection

This will be an email with a collection letter and the amount you owe. The spammer will tell you that you have a limited amount of time to make the payment or a lawsuit will be filed against you. They will attempt to get your personal information and get a payment out of you.

10 Paypal

This will be an email asking for your account information such as password and login along with your personal details. Paypal never asks for these details without being logged into your account.

The Precautions You Should Take With Potential Spam Emails

There are some really basic ways that you can protect yourself from malicious emails with virus. The first way is to use a good email service provided for your business. These servers providers go to great length to block spam emails using email blacklists. They can’t stop all of them but this will limit your exposure. Always search a link instead of clicking on it. Do your research and make sure it is really from the company. In a lot of cases it might be smart to contact the company directly to see if the email is from them if you are suspicious. Never download an attachment from an email you are not sure about. This is one of the main ways a hacker can get access to your data.

Conclusion

Spam emails have been around for an extremely long time and they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Unfortunately for people running legitimatize business at does make things a lot harder/ Something that seems so simple as sending an email to your customers has become so complex. Hopefully this article has given you a better understating of what spam is and why it is such a problem..