EOC - Week 8

If you mentioned SPAM to someone twenty years ago, no one would think much about it other than being a tasty canned good. Unless you’re a Korean War Veteran, then you might be at my throat. SPAM today has taken a who new meaning when it comes to the World Wide Web because it is a term used for soliciting and unwanted e-mail. For many, their inboxes is majority filled out with SPAM. The danger of SPAM is not from the massive clutter it produces but the potential of fraud or malice. Any innocent person accidently clicking on it because of a wireless mouse jumping all over the screen due to a bad reciever which could lead the person to accidently purchasing something they didn’t want, give permission to bypass their security to steal information or upload a virus, Trojan, malware, spyware, or worm.

From a legal perspective, SPAM can cause millions of dollars of damage if the “right” people let it. For instance if the people that sends out these SPAM e-mails to a million of random people about a brain enlargement pills (that’s made out of sugar, salt, finely pulverized rock and shredded confetti cardboard), there is a chance that out of the millions of people fall for it. Lets say 1% fall for the scam, that’s 10,000 victims. One bottle of the pills cost $40 and they can make up some kind of B.S. about shipping and charge enough $10. The con-artist would end up making $500,000. The people who take the pills not only hurt their wallets and their self-esteem for falling for this but can seriously have health problems for taking unknown substances. If you even wonder about spam, just remember that “SPAM is good in your stomach but not in your inbox.” – (Richmond Pham)