What is Computer-Aided Translation (CAT)

Spam in the computer does not simply mean ads. Spam is any message, article, or ad that repeats itself an unacceptable number of times so that it causes annoyance. The content of the spam is of no importance. It could contain your simple “Make Money Fast” hyperlink or a beautiful piece of poetry, but if the message is continuously repeated it becomes spam. The term spam is thought to have been taken from a famous Monty Python sketch. In that sketch spam came with everything the people ordered and the waitress would be constantly saying the word spam. Therefore the meaning of spam is something that repeats itself causing much anger or annoyance. Spam can be categorized as follows: • Junk mail: Mass mailings from legitimate businesses that is unwanted. • Noncommercial spam: Mass mailings of unsolicited messages without an apparent commercial motive including chain letters, urban legends, and joke collections. • Offensive and pornographic spam: Mass mailings of “adult” advertisements or pornographic pictures. • Spam scams: Mass mailings of fraudulent messages or those designed to con people out of personal information for the purpose of identity theft and other criminal acts. • Virus spam: Mass mailings that contain viruses, Trojans, malicious scripts, and so forth. Spoofing (Schwartz & Garfinkel, 1998) is a technique often used by spammers to make them harder to trace. Trojan viruses embedded in e-mail messages also employ spoofing techniques to ensure the source of the message is more difficult to locate (Ishibashi, Yamai, Abe, & Matsuura, 2003). Spam filters and virus scanners can only eliminate a certain amount of spam and also risk catching legitimate e-mails. As the SoBig virus has demonstrated, virus scanners themselves actually add to the e-mail traffic through notification and bounceback messages. SMTP is flawed in that it allows these e-mail headers to be faked, and does not allow for the sender to be authenticated as the “real” sender of the message (Geer, 2004). This article looks at a new type of spam known as spam over Internet telephony (SPIT).