Spam e-mail and the fight against it is nothing new. In fact, it has been around pretty much ever since the first e-mail system was created a few decades ago. Although, at first the impact of spam e-mail was limited, the amount of spam that organizations have to deal with has grown exponentially up to the point that more than 90 percent of messages sent worldwide each day are considered spam. One of the reasons why spam has become this popular, is of course, the fact that use of e-mail is widespread both for business and private conversations.

Often, spam is associated with unwanted advertisements. Although, that's how it all started, nowadays spam is much more than that; it's considered to be a collective noun for all unsolicited e-mail including advertisements or e-mails containing malicious code like viruses or malware.