What exactly is a spammer?

Question

I was under the impression, spammers were advertisers that got into you're e-mail hawking their products. Yet I noticed today there are some people in the Yahoo Group on Groups, that are calling each other spammers.I'm new at this, I would appreciate some education.

Answer 1

In a Group, a spammer will advertise their website, product, service, or other thing, no matter what the topic is about.  A spammer will virtually never post about the topic of the Group.

Answer 2

A spammer will post the same thing over and over again.. Advertising their website, their political position, etc.

Answer 3

Hope the following helps you:

How can I get more general information on spam?

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/...

What is spam?

"Spam is any message that's sent to multiple recipients who haven't specifically requested it. In other words, spam is predominantly garbage.

Spammers typically purchase or harvest a list of email addresses. They send messages from numerous different addresses to all areas of the Web. These messages tend to be "forged," to hide who actually sent them."

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/ya...

For more info visit the following link:

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/ya...

Answer 4

the meaning of it depends on the type of group, and if they have any rules set forth. spammers can mean anything as to ads, posting Avon, to work at home, or their own home business.

Answer 5

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

http://spam.abuse.net/overview/whatisspa...

Spamming is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages. While the most widely recognized form of spam is e-mail spam, the term is applied to similar abuses in other media: instant messaging spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, Web search engine spam, spam in blogs, wiki spam, mobile phone messaging spam, Internet forum spam and junk fax transmissions.[citation needed]

Spamming is economically viable because advertisers have no operating costs beyond the management of their mailing lists, and it is difficult to hold senders accountable for their mass mailings. Because the barrier to entry is so low, spammers are numerous, and the volume of unsolicited mail has become very high. The costs, such as lost productivity and fraud, are borne by the public and by Internet service providers, which have been forced to add extra capacity to cope with the deluge. Spamming is widely reviled, and has been the subject of legislation in many jurisdictions.[citation needed]

The people that create electronic spam are called spammers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_(elect...