Windows Explorer understands ZIP files, and Mac and Linux both come with the “zip” and “unzip” command line tools. One of the things that makes ZIP files so appealing is that support for creating and opening them (“zipping” and “unzipping”, typically) is built into every current operating system. It’s also one of the oldest archive and compression formats still in use, dating back to 1989. Add optional password-based encryption, and it gets even better. Those two features: bundling multiple files into one, and compressing them as it does so, make the ZIP file format one of the most common ways that files and collections of files are shared around the internet. Naturally it varies dramatically based on the compressibility of the original files. That means that even when a ZIP file contains only a single file, it’s very possible that the ZIP file will be smaller than the file it contains.
Rather than sending 50 separate documents as 50 separate files, you can instead create a ZIP file that contains them all, and send that single file. By bundling multiple files, and even folders, into a single container file, distribution, archival and organization of large numbers of files becomes more simple.Unfortunately with that ubiquity comes the potential for abuse.Īnd that’s exactly what spammers like to do.Ī ZIP file is a container for other files.Īt their most basic, ZIP files solve two problems in a very simple way: ZIP files are everywhere, and have a lot of very valid uses.
The ZIP file is the spammer’s – or rather the phisher’s – best friend.
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