These days, companies utilize numerous technologies to defend corporate assets, such as e-mail scanners, firewalls, web proxies, anti virus software, and spam blockers. Spammers continuously make it challenging by constantly updating and expanding the complexity, footprints, and extensive amount of spam they transmit, so keeping pace with the current security updates, exploits, and scams involves continuous effort. Many spam filters are unable to keep up with the many variations of e-mail threats. A growing percentage of them are not carrying a destructive payload (thereby avoiding e-mail security that depends on malicious software signatures), but instead try to tempt users into clicking on websites which are cable of "drive-by" infections. A computer can become infected just by visiting a website. Promises of free music, cell tones, computer software, or photos provide incentives to inspect these websites.

Individuals are more drawn to the links, and more likely to visit them, because they are being tempted by fundamental human traits by the attackers, like wanting to get something for free, curiousity, and even lust. This is because of an enhanced level of trust in security functions against viruses and other malicious software. Spammers and other creators of malicious software sometimes refer to this human factor as "wetware," and are raising the social engineering aspects of their assaults to take advantage of it. To fight this type of spam, businesses have to combine the modern technology, including heuristic techniques, point of origin analysis, etc., with clearly stated and communicated policies for dealing with unsolicited commercial e-mail.

Well-educated end users will help extinguish the weaknesses posed by "wetware." Targetting the human factor of security by mailing deceptive e-mails is normally called phishing. When the assailant has some basic data on the victim, these assaults are very targeted and efficient, these attacks are normally called spear phishing.