Spam Glossary - Glossary of spam related terms
- ASCII
- - Pronounced AS'kee, is an acronym that stands for American Standard Code for Information Exchange.
It is an extremely standard system that computers use to index every character that your computer can
display. ASCII indices are useful because they allow you to display characters not found on your
keyboard, like ¢, £, ¤, ¥, §, and °. See our
ASCII tables
in decimal and
hexadecimal format.
- Address Munger
- - A program or script which munges
your e-mail address. An easy and effective email address obfuscating tool exists
here on AddressMunger.com.
See Address Munging.
- Address Munging
- - The practice of disguising or obfuscating an
e-mail address to prevent it from being automatically collected
and used as a target for spam. It once referred simply to
mangling ofthe letters in an email address.
However, the term "address munging" now includes using ASCII
or JavaScript to display an email address that is
readable by real people but tougher to read by spam bots.
- Algorithm
- - A precise set of rules specifying how to solve a problem or perform a task in a finite number of steps.
- Array
- - A systematic arrangement of objects, usually in rows and columns.
- Blacklist
- - A list of objects that is being denied a specific attribute. To blacklist is to deny someone or something a specific attribute or privelage.
- Bot
- - A software program that imitates the behavior of a human.
- Bounce message
- - An automated e-mail message from a mail system informing the sender about a problem with delivery. The origina message is said to have bounced. A bounce message is also called a Delivery Status Notification (DSN) message.
- CAPTCHA
- - CAPTCHA stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart".
It is meant to help confirm that a response is not generated by a computer. Our
contact form generator employs a CAPTCHA so that
a contact form you generate for your site using our tool can be as secure against spam as possible.
- Center for Democracy and Technology
- - The Center for Democracy and Technology is a Washington, D.C. based non-profit
advocacy group that works to promote liberal values and constitutional liberties in the digital age.
They did research to determine the source of spam.
They found that posting your e-mail address on your website can get you spam,
but that obfuscating your e-mail address is
highly effective. They also suggest that you never respond to or unsubscribe from spam e-mail,
use multiple e-mail addresses, and not give your e-mail address to companies you do not trust.
- Chain Mail
- - A letter or email asking each recipient to send copies of the letter to other recipients. The
best and most annoying example are those suggesting that for every person you send the letter to, some
amount of money will be donated to a children's hospital or to some research company. Others include
those promising differing degrees of future happiness directly proportional to the
number of people the letter is forwarded to.
Chain letters have been around for decades,
and they were pretty popular on the internet from the start.
Notice that if everyone
obeys a chain letter, a chain letter will spread with a geometric progression. One person sends it to three
people. Those three each send it to three... that's nine. Those nine each send it to three... that's 27.
Then 81, 243, 729, and 2187 receive the email. Slick spammers knew this. They eventually either caught on to the
ease and popularity of sending chain e-mails, or perpetuated that popularity themselves.
They would send a chain e-mails expecting to receive multiple copies of them eventually, together with the email addresses
the letters had been sent to previously.
- Contact Form
- - An online form used to contact people without the use of a displayed e-mail address
or e-mail-sending program or application.
AddressMunger.com has developed a
powerful contact form generator tool
that has the added advantage of protecting your e-mail address from spam bots.
- Cryptographic Hash
- - See Hash
- Cryptographic Hash Fuction
- - A cryptographic hash function any well-defined procedure or mathematical
function that converts data into a well-defined, obfuscated
form in such a way that the original data can only be read using some form of
the reverse of the cryptographic hash function. The output of a cryptographic hash function is called a
cryptographic hash, or simply a hash.
In the case of a hashed password, the the purpose of a cryptographic hash function is to
create unique passwords, called hashes, for each site in such a way that, if the hash is forgotten, the user can recover the hashed
password by using your original password and the URL of the website requiring your password.
- DSN
- - An acronym that stands for Delivery Status Notification. See Bounce message.
- Delivery Status Notification message
- - See Bounce message
- Email Spoof
- - See Spoof
- HTML
- - Stands for HyperText Markup Language. It is the predominant markup language for
web pages.
- Hash
- -
- Data that is scrambled in a well-defined way
to produce a random-looking string that, when decoded returns the original data.
- Another word
for a multidimensional array.
- Hashed Password
- - See Password Hashing
- JavaScript
- - Created by Netscape, JavaScript is arguably the
simplest cross-platform web page scripting language.
In a usual web page, you will see text and links. Those are written in HTML. Pretty much everything
else that a web page can do requires JavaScript or another web scripting language.
- Keyword Blacklist
- - A list of words that is blocked from being used for a specific purpose, such as sending email or posting in forums. Frequently, keyword blacklists will blacklist strings of letters and numbers, successfully blocking the word "penisenlargement" by adding the string "penis" to the keyword blacklist. See this spam keyword blacklist for a particularly useful example of an email keyword blacklist.
- Mung
- - To make repeated changes which individually may be reversible,
but which ultimately result in unintentional, irreversible distruction of large
portions of the original item. It is sometimes bacronymed "Mash until no good" or
"Mung until no good". It is one of the first recursive acronyms. Rhymes with "Hung".
See Munge, Address Munging.
- Munge
- - To attempt to create a strong, secure string like an email address or password
through character substitution.
It is sometimes bacronymmed as "Modify Until Not Guessed Easily". Rhymes with "Lunge".
See Mung, Address Munging.
- Obfuscation
- - The hiding or concealment of data, making data ambiguous or unreadable except
when using a tool that can read the data. Our address munging
tool obfuscates an e-mail address using both ASCII
and JavaScript to hide your e-mail address from spam bots.
A well-written contact form can also be considered an e-mail address obfuscator because it
renders your e-mail address completely invisible. We recommend using our
contact form generator because
it is a much more effective tool for hiding your e-mail address.
- Password Hashing
- - Password hashing is the act of using a script to create a new password, called a
hash, from an old one.
The hash should be completely distinct from the original password. A good password hash algorithm
should make extremely different password hash given similar input values.
- Phishing
- - A criminal, fraudulent attempt to aquire sensitive personal information
by pretending to be a trustworthy company.
- Search Engine Bot
- - See Spider
- Snowshoe Spamming
- - The practice by some spammers of spreading spam output across many IP addresses in order to dilute reputation metrics and evade filters. The term snowshoe spamming analogizes this practice to snowshoes, which are made to spread a person's weight onto a larger area of snow.
- Spam
- - Spam is defined as unsolicited bulk email. Unsolicited means that the recipient of the email has not granted verifiable permission for the email to be sent. Sometimes also defined as unsolicited commercial e-mail, but this definition, focusing on the commercial aspect of bulk email, fails to take into account the vast majority of spam that appears in your inbox or spam folder. The acronym UBE or UCE are sometimes used.
- Spam Bot
- - A computer program specifically written to scan web pages for e-mail addresses.
Those e-mail addresses are recorded, and spam is sent to them. There are ways to avoid spam bots.
The easiest and most effective way of avoiding spam bots is the us of a contact form
like the one you can generate
here on AddressMunger.com.
- Spam Filter
- - A program or script created to detect and remove spam from an email inbox and send it directly to a spam folder.
- Spam Spider
- - See Spam Bot
- Spamhaus
- - An internet service provider or other firm that either
allows spam to be sent from its system or willingly provides services
to spammers. The word "spamhaus" is pseudo-German.
See Spamhaus Project
- Spamhaus Project
- - A project developed by Steve Linford to track e-mail spammers
and spam-related activity.
See Spamhaus
- Spammer
- - A person or program that sends spam.
- Spamtrap
- - A decoy email address created to intentionally collect spam for the purposes of gaining informaiton on what spam is being sent and to where it is being sent.
- Spider
- - The bots that search engines use to collect information about
web pages. Sometimes just called a bot.
- Spoof
- - Email activity in which the e-mail sender alters the e-mail address, header, or other content
of an email in order to appear as though the e-mail sent originated from a different, trustworthy source.
- Spyware
- - Any software that covertly gathers information about a user while they
surf the internet, and transmits the information to an individual or company that uses
it for illegal marketing or other purposes.
- Steve Linford
- - A British anti-spam campaigner who founded
The Spamhaus Project.
- Transparent Mangling
- - Intilaly adrdses mugning rfeererd to
the mxiing of lteters or smyblos in an eamil adrdess, as in tihs snetecne. However it now commonly refers to any
use of munging, ASCII, and JavaScript to
hide your e-mail address. Transparent mangling refers to any munging in
which the text, in this case the e-mail address, is perfectly visible to any person viewing the text. For example, this e-mail address
"this@email.address" is
transparently mangled, though you cannot tell by looking at it. The source code actually reads as
"th
is&
#x40;e
09;ai

8;.ad
dre
ss".
- UBE
- - An acronym that stands for Unsolicited Bulk Email. See Spam.
- UCE
- - An acronym standing for Unsolicited Commercial Email. See Spam
- Unsolicited Bulk Email
- - One of many definitions of spam is unsolicited bulk email. See Spam.
- Unsolicited Commercial Email
- - One of the many definitions of spam. However, this definition fails to take into account a great deal of the bulk email that end up in your spam folder. See Spam
- Unsubscribe
- - To submit a request to discontinue receiving e-mail or other
contacts from another person. You should never ever unsubscribe from spam e-mail.
After all, you did not subscribe to the spam, and they still have your e-mail address.
- Web Crawler
- - See Spider
- Web Robot
- - See Spider
- Web Spider
- - See Spider
- Well-Definition
- - A mathematical definition or function that produces the same output or list
of outputs for any given input or list of inputs.
Sources: Wikipedia,
Dictionary.com,
The Jargon File, version 4.4.7
Spamhaus
