My thoughts on…the 25th anniversary of spam
May 4th 2007 -
Cialis, Viagra, weight loss, refinance, online degree, etc. Recognize these anyone? Of course you do. They are the calling cards of that scourge of the inbox, spam. And guess what? Wednesday was its 25th anniversary. But none of us are in a celebratory mood. The first spam message was sent in 1978, back when the Internet was ARPANET by Gary Thuerk, a marketer for DEC. It was about an open house to show off the new Dec-20 computer. I was hoping that a bunch of geeks would get together and “thank” the company by flooding their inbox with spam. But it turns out that DEC no longer exists, and not because the tech community shunned them. They were bought by Compaq, which was then bought by HP. In Gary’s defense, spam didn’t exist back then. In fact, spam was used to refer to junk email around 15 years later.
How did it get associated with canned ham? It all started with a Monty Python sketch set in a restaurant where everything on the menu was made from SPAM. In the 80s, abusive users of MUDs would type “SPAM” constantly to scroll other users’ text off the screen. Eventually posting of junk messages became known as spamming, and thanks to the ruthless wave of commercial junk mail in the 90s, spam has now become mainly associated with email. I heard Hormel griping about their product being associated with unwanted email a while back. Guess they finally wised up and saw the publicity oppurtunity. Just about every nation on earth gets junk mail, so just about every nation on earth knows about spam.
Spam’s family has grown over the years. Its wife, Mrs. Phish, son Virus, daughter Pop-up, and of course, cousin 419, all the way from Nigeria. So why hasn’t anyone stopped spam? Mainly because of it’s so hard to define and freedom of speech issues. No one wants spam, but everyone would fight an attempt to censor the Internet. And you’d be surprised at how many people can’t find their inbox’s built-in spam blocker. People are really that dim. Will spam ever end? Most likely not. Spammers are using more vicious ways to get around spam blockers, such as using wi-fi networks and worms. After all, a sucker’s born every minute, and cashing in on their gullibility could be as easy as clicking “Send”.
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Abeni Says:
May 5th, 2007 at 7:51 am
Definitely not one to celebrate.Damn annoyances
Crankyputz Says:
May 5th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
who creates spam and why? Who sits in their basement creating emails on erectile dysfunction???