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Word of the week 9 -15 February 2009 SPAM

Most email users receive unwanted emails from senders with odd-sounding names offering a variety of products and services, which are also for the most part unwanted. These junk emails, sent simultaneously to thousands if not millions of computer users have been known since the early 1990s as spam.

This term appears to have nothing to do with the original word spam, which was a proprietary name for a brand of tinned meat first produced in the United States and much appreciated in the UK during World War II and the years of rationing that followed it. It is widely believed that spam originated as a short form of the words spiced ham.

How the same word came to be applied to junk email is more of a mystery. Some people attribute it to a sketch in the British cult comedy TV series Monty Python, in which a group of Vikings attempt to order food in a typical greasy spoon café in 1970s England where everything is served with spam. Perhaps like the spam in the comedy sketch spam emails are so-called because they are excessive and ultimately unwanted.

Word of the week 19 - 25 January 2009 PHISHING

The criminal activity of persuading people to give personal information such as account numbers, passwords and credit card details by directing them to a fake website which has been made to look exactly the same as the website of a legitimate bank or other organisation.

Typically, emails are used as "bait" (= cebo) in order to get the potential victim to visit the fake website. The emails use various stratagems to trick readers into clicking on the included links, thereby opening the bogus website. Information submitted on these bogus websites may then be used to steal funds from the user's accounts and/or steal the victim's identity.

The term phishing has been around in computer hacker culture since the mid-nineties, where it originally referred more generally to the practice of acquiring password information in order to infringe security barriers. Its use specifically in the context of internet-based financial crimes is more recent. The word is derived from a deliberate misspelling of fish in its verbal sense of trying to obtain information.

Word of the week 8 - 14 December 2008 AVATAR

An avatar (from the Sanskrit word avatara, meaning "incarnation”) is a computer user's representation of himself/herself or alter ego, usually in the form of a three-dimensional model used in computer games or a two-dimensional icon (picture) used on Internet forums and other communities. It is an “object” representing the embodiment of the user.

You can create your own avatar on http://www.befunky.com/