Give me info please. If the spam is virus
Please dont post the same question twice throughout the forum, your other post in the General Topics has been removed.
Spam is advertising, opening spam emails and clicking on links within spam can lead to viruses/malware.
addition information of you wont to read.
No, spam is not a virus. craigb is right, cyber crooks spread malware via spam.
Whilst spam in itself isn’t a virus, the object in most cases is to sell you something. This purchase could ultimately lead to further fraudulent transactions or even identity theft.
So all spam should be treated in the same way:
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Never open unsolicited email, this in itself could trigger a remote connection, confirming you opened it and that is likely to have your email address being sold to other spammers as a live address that is prepared to open spam.
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If you have failed 1 above, never click on links in unsolicited email, you never know where it might lead.
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Never open attachments in unsolicited emails as this could well get you infected.
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Never respond to it, be that bounce the email back, it may still end up with you getting more spam and there is a strong likelihood that the From address is faked and you are throwing it back to someone whos email address has been harvested or on a spammers list.
So by far the easiest option it to ‘delete’ unsolicited email. Having an email anti-spam application that can monitor email for spam and delete the spam at server level so you don’t have to download it in full to assess if it is spam.
Well, I was trained as a biologist.
Two properties of a virus are that it spreads, and is contagious. Yes, you can have one but not the other. Contagious things that are not spreading, spreading things that are not contagious. [I expect to receive some comments on this statement.]
If the spam message you received is capable of infecting others, either with your assistance (something like [click this button]) or without your assistance (let’s spread to his contact list), then it can be considered to exhibit viral activity. If the spam messsage you received has no way of spreading to others, then it is definitely not a virus. There is a gray area going from succesful virus through ‘nice try’ to ‘nah, this is a virus, no kiddding?’. I defined two properties of a virus above.
As an example. You are spammed with a hoax: “Microsoft decided to stop support of Windows XP immediately; please visit this site to upgrade”. If, for some reason, you decide to copy this message to your acquaintances, then the spam is viral. Regardless of your action, the hoax spreads from the same source you got it. But only when you or your pc acts as a second source (when you or your pc actively spread it), then it can be considered a virus.
Spam, virus, yes, no? Who can decide. If you cooperate with them it’s a virus, if not, then not. Yeah, it is obviously not ‘you’, but something like ‘a qualified majority of internet users’, or ‘a qualified majority of spam recipients’.
So, a spam message may contain a virus. Spam messages may behave like a virus, depending on the actions of their recipients. Spam as a category only partially coincides with ‘virus’.
Please, ask some more questions. This is the stuff I like. But don’t count on me saying yes or no.