newgroup spamming - Newsgroup spam predates e-mail spam, and targets Usenet newsgroups and it consists of repetitious posting of a message (or substantially similar messages). The Breidbart Index was developed to provide an objective measure of the 'spamminess' of a multi-posted or cross-posted message on Usenet. Spamming in an internet forum is when a user posts a message that is off-topic, has little relevance to the subject being discussed, or is a post that fails to contribute to the thread. Lastly, there is also the case where a person posts messages solely for the purpose of increasing his forum ranking. Online message boards can sometimes be spammed with tens of thousands of meaningless messages in a few hours. The spam need not be restricted to the creation of new meaningless threads, it can involve the 'revival' of obsolete threads dating many weeks or months. A recent form of forum spam is where a member registers, he/she never posts, but puts spam in his/her profile. (The members website is of porn or any other spam-related site.)