Spamming
unsolicited electronic messages sent in bulk, especially advertisements
Spamming is the use of messaging systems to send multiple unsolicited messages (spam) to large numbers of recipients for the purpose of commercial advertising, non-commercial proselytizing, or any prohibited purpose (especially phishing). It can also be repeatedly sending the same message to the same user. The most widely recognized form of spam is email spam.
Similar abuses also occur in other media: instant messaging, Usenet newsgroup, Web search engines, blogs, wiki, online classified ads, mobile phone messaging, Internet forum, fax transmissions, social spam, mobile apps, television advertising, and file sharing. It is named after Spam, a luncheon meat, by way of a Monty Python sketch about a restaurant that has Spam in almost every dish, in which Vikings annoyingly sing "Spam" repeatedly.
Spamming remains economically viable because advertisers have no operating costs beyond the management of their mailing lists, servers, infrastructures, IP ranges, and domain names, and it is difficult to hold senders accountable for their mass mailings. The costs, such as lost productivity and fraud, are borne by the public and by Internet service providers, which have added extra capacity to cope with the volume. Spamming has been the subject of legislation in many jurisdictions.
A person who creates spam is called a spammer.
Etymology
The term spam is derived from the 1970 "Spam" sketch of the BBC sketch comedy television series Monty Python's Flying Circus.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Spamming” is unsolicited electronic messages sent in bulk, especially advertisements. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Spamming, unsolicited and electronic, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “unsolicited electronic messages sent in bulk, especially advertisements” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q83058. The Library of Congress control number is sh98004365. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1970.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Spamming” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.