I am getting a lot of email from companies and strangers, which I don't want. Spam is the colloquial term used to describe unsolicited, unwanted email, which is sent to many people at once. It often includes advertisements for 'get rich quick' schemes, email address lists, porn sites and other similar material. Some of these schemes are illegal in Australia. Laws have been passed in some states of the USA which makes unsolicited email illegal.
Spammers use a variety of methods to get email address.
Some use software, which harvests email addresses from web pages. Another common method is to harvest them from news groups. Pacific Internet maintains a variety of anti-spam features. We aim to have a balance between strictness on spam but also ensure no valid email will be lost. These features will not catch all of the spam that may be sent.