Spam is easily defined as unsolicited emails. There is a fine line between advertising and exploitation of privacy. Spammers (a company who does sends out the spam emails) finds email address’s by looking though internet forums, message boards, blogs, and news groups. People will often leave their email addresses when posting or responding in those online communities and spammers take advantage of those emails. How does spam work? Spam is a business in itself, well know companies come into into an agreement with a spammer, who generates email advertisements to a group of unsuspecting recipients. Spammers may also obtain one’s email address by purchasing them from companies that record email addresses and sell CD's full of them. The internet is a very vulnerable place where people can have their personal information expose. Majority of spam emails people receive are either junk or viruses. Spam is nothing but an annoying internet telemarketer. Most spam emails contains fake offers that require personal information, such as postal address, so they have another way to promote business by advertising to a new location. Every time someone receives a spam email their email address is exposed and distributed to other people. Businesses use a software which sends an email message to millions of people at the same time over bare mailboxes with useless junk and unnecessary requirements from the receiver that burden the recipients. Spam may be deleted by pushing the delete key, but why must the recipients go through that hassle? Why must they be notified for a message that they have not been interested in? Spam intimidates free speech on the Internet by forcing the receiver to participate in the transaction of spam acceptance. An email address is personal information, it used to receive personal data and necessary information of the owners interest. Spam mail is also frowned upon because it allows the sender to have unapproved use of the recipient's memory space and Internet resources Allowing spam and junk mail invades a email address holders personal space and hard drive memory. Due to the amount of junk and spam mail many computer systems slow down in processing speed and tend to have a system crash. The government has taken a stand against Spammers by passing the Spam Act in 2003. This Act administers unsolicited commercial email messages and requires that they include a notice that the message is an advertisement or solicitation. It also requires that such messages include the sender's valid postal address and a means for the recipient to opt-out (unsubscribe). The Act prohibits fraudulent subject headings, and it requires that email containing sexually oriented material contain a warning label. It also creates criminal or civil penalties for sending spam through another's computer without authorization, and for sending deceptive unsolicited commercial email. Unfortunately this act does not stop all spammers but there is ways where you can protect your self from spam emails. One may use an email client, it has built in spam filters that will put any suspicious emails in a distinguished folder.