Spamming is the act of sending unsolicited emails to a large audience or a large number of users in a mailing list. Spammers were once harmless and were used only for hoaxes. For instance, there were spam emails telling people to switch off their internet at certain periods, or to forward a certain message to all their contacts.
The word spam was coined in 1993 to refer, not to emails, but unwanted postings in a Usenet newsgroups network. There were two such incidents at the time, one of which was a post on many newsgroups with a global alert that Jesus, worshipped by Christians, was coming. The second incident was another posting on even more Usenet newsgroups about the termination of the Green Card Lottery. Possibly to cause nuisance, the idea of sending such messages via email started. In 1996, network managers tried to stop the issue by creating a Mail Abuse Prevention...
