[from Monty Python's Flying Circus]
1. To crash a program by overrunning a fixed-size buffer with excessively large input data. See also buffer overflow, overrun screw, smash the stack.
2. To cause a newsgroup to be flooded with irrelevant or
inappropriate messages. You can spam a newsgroup with as little as one
well- (or ill-) planned message (e.g. asking What do you think of
abortion?
on soc.women).
This is often done with cross-posting (e.g. any
message which is cross-posted to alt.rush-limbaugh and alt.politics.homosexuality will almost
inevitably spam both groups). This overlaps with
troll behavior; the latter more specific term has
become more common.
3. To send many identical or nearly-identical messages separately to a large number of Usenet newsgroups. This is more specifically called ECP, Excessive Cross-Posting. This is one sure way to infuriate nearly everyone on the Net. See also velveeta and jello.
4. To bombard a newsgroup with multiple copies of a message. This is more specifically called EMP, Excessive Multi-Posting.
5. To mass-mail unrequested identical or nearly-identical email messages, particularly those containing advertising. Especially used when the mail addresses have been culled from network traffic or databases without the consent of the recipients. Synonyms include UCE, UBE. As a noun, ‘spam’ refers to the messages so sent.
6. Any large, annoying, quantity of output. For instance, someone
on IRC who walks away from their screen and comes back to find 200 lines of
text might say Oh no, spam
.
The later definitions have become much more prevalent as the Internet
has opened up to non-techies, and to most people senses 3 4 and 5 are now
primary. All three behaviors are considered abuse of the net, and are
almost universally grounds for termination of the originator's email
account or network connection. In these senses the term ‘spam’
has gone mainstream, though without its original sense or folkloric freight
— there is apparently a widespread myth among
lusers that spamming
is what happens
when you dump cans of Spam into a revolving fan. Hormel, the makers of
Spam, have published a surprisingly enlightened position statement on the
Internet usage.