Every day I get a couple of email messages from people I don't know. When I open one of them, I keep getting other email messages and this makes me annoyed. This is called "Spam".
In a spam email the sender can send one message to a big number of people. This person sends the message in the hope that the people receiving the message will buy a product.
Spam email is a big problem for internet companies. It is estimated that 70% of the world's email is spam.
Lately some people were sentenced by courts to try to stop spam email. The people who send spam email use more than one email address. They add new people to their list every minute. They can send as many as ten million messages a day. If they could have a thousand customers, they would make a lot of money and they wouldn't have to work for the rest of their lives.
The problem with spam email is that it sometimes has viruses in it. Viruses can damage computers and people can lose the files they saved.
Some people use spam email to con others. This means they try to trick them and take their money. They promise to sell them products that don't exist. After the person who received the email sends money, he or she never get the product they paid for.
