Email spam, also known as
junk email or
unsolicited bulk email (
UBE), is a subset of
electronic spam involving nearly identical messages sent to numerous recipients by
email. The messages may contain disguised links that appear to be for familiar websites but in fact lead to
phishing web sites or sites that are hosting
malware. Spam email may also include malware as scripts or other executable file attachments. Definitions of spam usually include the aspects that email is unsolicited and sent in bulk. One subset of UBE is
UCE (unsolicited commercial email). The opposite of "spam", email which one wants, is sometimes called "ham". Like
other forms of unwanted bulk messaging, it is named for
Spam luncheon meat by way of a
Monty Python sketch in which Spam is depicted as
ubiquitous and unavoidable.