Slashdot Mirror
Celebrating Spam's Ten-Year Anniversary
khalua writes "Netcraft has a story that 10 years ago today, the first widely recognized spam was sent by... oh the irony...a law firm. Hate to see what a beast it grows into when it's 20." Reader prostoalex writes "Ever wonder why spam is so prevalent and who buys all those revolutionary products sold at unbelievable prices? Direct Marketing Association estimates $11.7 billion was spent on goods and services pitched via unsolicited e-mail. The average buy was $155, which exceeds the average of $114 that opt-in e-mail generated. It's worth noting that US e-commerce sales in general generated $50 billion total last year, however, the data was presented by a different researcher."
I'll tell you who buys this stuff:
I had an aquaintence who surfing the web while we were in the library one time and freaked out all of a sudden. She went up to ask the librarian if she wouldn't be able to get her "prize" she just "won" because she was in a library and the "web people" wouldn't know where to find her...
That is who buys this stuff.
Netcraft confirm that spam is dying?
...that people actually buy the stuff in spam... What kind of idiot would--HEY! look! Cheap Viagra! woohoo!!! what luck!
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
...of making my mortage three to four inches larger while working at home for a Nigerian with financial problems who gets paid to take surverys online for a company that would like to pre-apporve me for a no-hassle Platinum card that I can use to pay for tuition at "a major university."
Ok, I'm done now...
The real litigious bastards...
Show me 11 billion from spam and I'll show you a guy with a 4 foot long penis.
"The 23rd Spam" by Sam the Psalmist,Toronto, Ontario
(real name withheld by request)
The 23rd Spam
The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures,
He leadeth me beside the still waters,
He restoreth my credit and consolidateth my debts,
For as little as $1,750,
If I act now.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: for thou art with me,
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
And can now be 50 Percent Larger in Three Weeks.
Guaranteed.
Thou preparest a table before me
In the presence of mine enemies,
Thou annointest my head with oil,
My cup runneth over.
But as an added bonus,
I will receive $1,000.00 cash,
If I complete thy online registration form today.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me,
All the days of my life,
And I will dwell forever,
In the House of the Lord,
Which I shall refinanceth,
To take advantage,
Of the lowest mortgage rates in years.
You probably shouldn't click this.
Crikey, thats a lot of penis enlargement pills.
I feel quite inadequate now.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
[on the tag of a birthday present to spam]:
l address.com
To: Spam
From: Everyone
[spam opens package] thousands of spring-loaded snakes carrying advertisements for penis enlargers, viagra, and various pointless gidgets flys out.
Bottom of package reads:
To be removed from this list, email: okstopspammingmeseriously@yeahrightlikethisisarea
It by no means was the first. Plenty of spams went out, but were on a small scale (like no more than 20 newsgroups).
Nor was it the first extreme newsgroup spamming. It missed that by a few weeks.
The very first, excruciatingly-painful, extreme Usenet spamming was the "The End of the World is Coming!" by some Jesus-freak. Someone generated cancels for it, and then sent out a message "The End of the World has been Cancelled."
C&S, however, were the first couple of dedicated spammers that proclaimed "we will spam, and be happy to sue anyone that disagrees!"
estimates $11.7 billion was spent on goods and services pitched via unsolicited e-mail.
If one person answered all of these penis lengthening ads and purchased the product, the resulting member would stretch to the moon, circle it 3 times, and reach all the way back.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Everyone on my contact list and in my address book is going to hear about this monumental anniversary! And hopefully they will all forward it to everyone they know!
I was going to email you and discuss this unsubscribe feature, but then I realized that you probably wouldn't get the email...
It will be taking your keys when its twenty!
Candle burns its brightest in the dark
11.7 Billion?!
Oh man, the dark side is calling me. It's whispering in the back of my mind "Go ahead and just send out millions of emails a day and rake in millions of dollars. So what if you are hated by almost every living person on the planet....11.7 billion!"
Then I smack myself and remember the most important lesson my dad ever taught me "never degrade yourself for money, only for personal enjoyment".
They are never going to be able to stop these guys now. With that kind of money they can buy all the influence they need to keep pumping this crap out until the system becomes so overloaded that people stop using email altogether.
Or could it be that people that are not web-saavy have a small penis that they can't get up because they're worried about their mortgage or that poor guy in Nigeria that can't get his money out?
Maybe there's an obvious correlation here that we just don't see because we are web-saavy.
myke (aka "The Tripod")
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
I know, I know. Offtopic. Lighten up though, it's SPAM!!
I'll only believe it works when you show me a man with a 3 foot penis with diplomas from Harvard and MIT and with several Platinum cards for all the cash that Nigerian billionaires he didn't know left him when they died.
"Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect" -- Linus Torval
I'm so happy about this that I'm going to send an e-mail about the event to 43,000,000 of my closest friends.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Yes, you're completely right. It's totally absurd to think that spam is profitable. He has a strong incentive to lie, and convince people with dubious ethics that it might be worth a try, therefore increasing his competition.
It makes no sense that someone would continue spamming because they are making money.
Obviously, spammers are spamming because it's fun to annoy system administrators, not because it's possible to make money doing it.
Being clever and having poor ethics are not mutually exclusive. Your rules are dumb.
Direct Marketing Association estimates $11.7 billion was spent on goods and services pitched via unsolicited e-mail.
In other news, the American Society for the Sales of Alternative Medicine estimated that new age hippies saved $47.3 trillion by forgoing medical insurance and waving crystals around insead.
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994