Glossary
Note: This Glossary is for reference only. Readers are advised to refer to the UEM Ordinance for the statutory definitions of the relevant terms.
| Address
Harvesting Software |
Software that is
specifically designed or marketed for use for searching the Internet or a public
telecommunications network, and collecting electronic addresses such as
telephone numbers or email addresses. |
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| Brute
Force Attack |
A brute force attack/search is a method to systematically enumerating all possible choices (e.g. email addresses or telephone numbers) and checking whether each choice exists (e.g. by dialing to each of the possible telephone numbers). |
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| Dictionary Attack |
A dictionary attack is an
automated means of generating e-mail addresses or other contact addresses by combining
names, letters, numbers or symbols into numerous permutations
. Since there are many "John" and "Mary"
in various organisations, spammers are certain that they
can reach at least one of them once they spam them all. This can happen even
if the recipients have never published their e-mail addresses or other contact
addresses. |
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| Do-not-call Registers |
Do-not-call Registers are
registers of electronic addresses (such as phone, fax and SMS/MMS numbers) established
by OFTA under section 30 of the Ordinance. Their purposes are to provide:
1) registered users of electronic addresses
with a convenient means by which they may notify senders of commercial
electronic messages that they do not wish to receive such messages; and
2) senders of commercial electronic messages with
a convenient means by which they may ascertain
whether a registered user of an electronic address
does not wish to receive commercial electronic
messages at that electronic address. |
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| Header |
Header is
machine-generated information about the source or routing of the electronic
message such as calling line identifications or IP addresses. It does not include the 'from'
field in email message which can easily be altered by senders. |
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| Message Transfer Agent (MTA) |
An MTA is a program
responsible for receiving, routing, and delivering e-mail messages. MTAs receive e-mail messages and recipient addresses from
local users and remote hosts, perform alias creation and forwarding functions,
and deliver the messages to their destinations. An MTA is sometimes called a
mail transport agent, a mail router, an Internet mailer, or a mail server
program. |
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| Open
Relay |
An Open Relay is an e-mail
Message Transfer Agent that will deliver any e-mail for any sender. Spammers
seek out these servers as a free ride for their messages. |
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| Trojan
/ Trojan Horse |
A Trojan Horse is a
program which appears harmless, but contains malicious or harmful code. Once
loaded into your computer system, it can wreak damages on the sly, such as
ruining the file allocation table or hard disk. A Trojan horse may be widely
redistributed as part of a computer virus. |
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| Virus |
A virus is a programming
code often disguised as something else that causes some unexpected and
usually undesirable event. A virus is often designed so that it is
automatically spread to other computer users. Many of the e-mail spam contain
virus attachments that can infect your computer to help the spammers send out
more of their material. |
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| Zombie
Computer |
A computer attached to the
Internet that has been compromised by a hacker, a computer virus, or a Trojan
program. Such computers are usually
used to perform malicious tasks such as spamming under remote direction, with
the owner normally unaware of such tasks. |
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