The word spam comes from a gag in a comedy series in which all the dishes in a restaurant include a brand of canned luncheon meat called spam as the main ingredient. By way of comparison, this term started being used to describe the huge number of unwanted messages received by any email account. Although it is not usual, spam may contain viruses or other malicious codes, or email addresses which lead to web pages equipped to download programs in an unauthorized manner. This was presumably the method used by the famous worm Sobig.F which was granted the title

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