64 Chapter 2 · Stalkers on Your Desktop Words Can Hurt You Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can be pretty damaging, too. Here are some examples of e-mail abuse that can have a serious impact on the financial welfare of the individual or business. Spam, Spam, Spam I nearly didn't include this section; after all, we all know what spam is, don't we? However, we all have different definitions, including Hormel, the manufacturers of the meat product after which it's named.They insist that when referring to e-mail abuse, their capitalized trademark should not be used, by the way.) So this seems a good point to define some terms and then expand on some specific attacks. Originally, the term spam was applied to inappropriate cross posting and other abuse of newsgroups. Now it's usually applied to e-mail, though it may used in the context of other forms of messaging, such as SMS texting and Instant Messaging services (Spim.) It may be applied by different people to almost any form of unsolicited e-mail. However, not all unso- licited mail is spam. Otherwise, no one would ever receive mail they hadn't given advance permission for.There is a technique called whitelisting that essentially means you don't read mail from people you haven't specifically listed as an "acceptable" source of mail.This is fine as long as there is some way for people needing to send legitimate mail to you to get onto