Spams and Viruses

Spam which is also known as Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE) or Junk E-mail, provokes anger as well as annoyance in regular computer users because it is
something that one cannot prevent in terms of how many is sent to their inbox therefore it is something that will always continue to exist but hopefully as we move further in the technological age they will cease to exist.
The most commonly known form of spam is email-spam but there are also other spam affected media like instant messaging spam, Web search engine spam,
social networking spam and so on. Although there are some cases whereby emails that aren't spam are treated as one but in most cases that rarely happens. There are even laws that are against
the sending of spam in most places, but it still persists. Individuals that create spams are called Spammers.

A spam filter, software that separates legitimate mail from spam, gives excellent protection against the problem. Examples include SpamAssassin, SpamBusters and PureMessage. Usually the service that supplies your email account for example your school or company, already have a spam filter installed. The filter software deals with messages as they arrive, separating the spam from the legitimate email, which it places in your inbox. A spam filter (Snyder 2008) can also be defined as a software that separates legitimate mail from spam by passing it through a version of the Turing test in chapter 23 which determines if email is spam is really just a program's best guess. The program scans the email and assigns a score that measures how many properties typical of spam are also considered spam email. If the score is above the user threshold, the email is considered spam and moved to a separate folder, called the spam quarantine. Most companies sell us products online to tell us about new offers by email. If we then decided later that we do not want to receive any more mail from the company, we can usually stop it by one of two ways. The first and easiest way is to unsubscribe. Reputable companies inclue at the bottom of every email an unsubscribe link (which is usally in small print) which then sends a notification to the company that you no longer want to receive their email notices. (The actual removal from the list usually takes 24 hours.)

Among the unsavory critters that you can encounter in the social world of computing, viruses and worms are very common. They can be quite detructive, but they are easy enough to protect against.

Viruses and Worms are small programs that can make copies of themselves. If that were all they did, they wouldn't be much of a problem. But malicious programmers can include additional instructions that can harm your computer, phone, or other computer-based device.

They can modify or delete files, fill up your memory and disk with compies of itself, watch your keystrokes looking for passwords, or take over your computer to launch other unwanted activities elsewhere. This malicious code can be the source of serious problems.

The difference between a virus and a worm is that the virus program "rides along" with other software, while the worm can actually send itself to other devices on the internet.

ATrojan Program is a program with software hiding inside, performing operations unbeknownst to the user. Technically it is a virus, but rather than spreading itself to other computers, it gathers data.E.g.Trojans can record keystrokes to get passwords, recod other sensitive data, and load other malicious software.

The mode in which a virus, worm or other malware gets into your computer is called the vector of attack.

Now test your knowledge