Discussion
What does ‘spam’ mean in the context of email?
Answer: C
Correct answer: Unsolicited bulk messages sent indiscriminately
Spam is unsolicited bulk email, sent indiscriminately to very large numbers of recipients, usually advertising something or attempting fraud. It is economically viable because the marginal cost of sending a message is essentially zero, so a response rate of one in a million can still pay. That asymmetry - negligible cost to the sender, real cost to every recipient - is the whole of the problem, and it is a direct consequence of SMTP having been designed in an era of mutual trust, with no authentication of the sender. The countermeasures work at several levels: content filtering, often Bayesian, learning what a user treats as spam; blocklists of known senders; rate limiting; and sender verification through SPF, DKIM and DMARC, which let a domain declare which servers may send on its behalf and let receivers check the claim. The name comes from a Monty Python sketch in which the word drowns out all conversation.
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