Spamming

Addiction to ICT often leads to an irresponsible use of the technology which would have corollary effect on those around them. One of the most significant ethical issues that arose from addiction to ICT is the phenomenon of spamming.

What is spam actually? From the oxford dictionary, spamming comes from the root word ‘spam’ which means irrelevant or appropriate messages sent on the internet to a large number of newsgroups or users. Spam also brings the meaning of send the same message indiscriminately to large numbers of users on the Internet.

Meanwhile from the ICT perspective, spam is flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it. Most spam is commercial advertising, often for dubious products, get-rich-quick schemes, or quasi-legal services. Spam costs the sender very little to send most of the costs are paid for by the recipient or the carriers rather than by the sender.

Commercial spamming happens when companies capitalizing on the low cost and benefits provided by ICT spam email accounts with advertisements.

Some people doesn’t realize that they are actually have been spammed.

Email spam typically cost users money out-of-pocket to receive. Many people, anyone with measured phone service, read or receive their mail while the meter is running, so to speak. Spam costs them additional money.

One particularly nasty variant of email spam is sending spam to mailing lists (public or private email discussion forums.) Because many mailing lists limit activity to their subscribers, spammers will use automated tools to subscribe to as many mailing lists as possible, so that they can grab the lists of addresses, or use the mailing list as a direct target for their attacks.

Why this phenomenon can happened? This is basically because the carelessness of certain people. The users of Friendster, Myspace, Hi5, Tagged, Facebook and many more especially are the target people by the spammers. These users might not read the terms and conditions of the site when they join these networks and could unknowingly grant these sites the permissions to access their address book and create enormous spam mails for their friends. By installing special software, information can be automatically retrieved upon successful registration of e.g. Friendster. The necessity to agree to the lengthy terms and conditions may induce people to simply registering without contemplating end consequences.

posted by- atikah n izzaty =)