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Spam is when someone sends bulk, unrequested messages to unsuspecting people, usually using some electronic form of messaging. Most often spam is sent via e-mail, but spammers are starting to use instant messaging, and mobile phone spam. Spamming makes sense to the spammer because there is little or no cost involved other than sending the messages and maintaining or obtaining the mailing lists. The real costs of spam, such as lost time, fraud & so on are paid for by the public and the internet providers. Some of these e-mails go out to hundreds sometimes thousands of unsuspecting people. While this is often seen as more of an annoyance than a threat, it can cause e-mail slow downs and other problems. Most spam is directed at convincing you to buy either something or a service from the person or company that the spam was sent from. Sometimes this is even a useful product or service, however onyone buying from a spammer just encourages them. Replying to spam, even to only ask to be removed from their list, only encourages the spammer as it identifies a good e-mail address.
A good series of articles on spam can be found on the Wikipedia, see below.
A new article from PC World indicates that some spammers would rather use pictures than works. See below.
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