Spam is flooding the internet with multiple copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message to 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 borne by the recipient and the carriers rather than by the sender.

Cancellable Usenet Spam
There are two main types of spam, and they have different effects on internet users. Cancellable Usenet spam is a single message sent to 20 or more Usenet newsgroups. (Through long experience, Usenet users have found that any message posted to so many newsgroups is often not relevant to most or all of them.) Usenet spam is aimed at "lurkers", people who read newsgroups but rarely or never post and give their address away. Usenet spam robs users of the utility of the newsgroups by overwhelming them with a barrage of advertising or other irrelevant posts. Furthermore, Usenet spam subverts the ability of system administrators and owners to manage the topics they accept on their systems.

Email Spam
Email spam targets individual users with direct mail messages. Email spam lists are often created by scanning Usenet postings, stealing internet mailing lists, or searching the web for addresses. Email spams typically cost users money to receive. Many people - anyone with measured phone service - read or receive their mail while the meter is running, so to speak, therefore spam costs them additional money. Due to the ever increasing number of spam emails, mail servers require continual monitoring and upgrading in order to maintainer the increased load they must now carry and these costs may intern be proportionally applied to the ISP's subscribers.

Spam and Mailing Lists
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 they can hijack the lists of addresses, or use the mailing list as a direct target for their attacks.

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