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."

Comments

Re:That's Who

[Em Emalb]

Sounds like this was an opportunity for you to explain to her it was a scam and perhaps educate one more person....ah hell, who am I kidding?

Stupid twit prolly wonders how all those people "found her". Prolly likes to speak with telemarketers too.

Gah.

*sigh*....

[tekiegreg]

As long as Spam continues to be profitable (and apparently increasingly so), I fear we may never really see the end of it. Even if SMTP protocols are revised, even if Internet postage is applied to emails, as long as you're doing better revenues over your expenses, which in most cases you are, then there is no hope.

Tho I may sound resigned and defeated to e-mail's evenutal fate, there are alternates. Instant messaging is easier controlled (I never get any Spam, but then I don't allow people on my buddy list to IM me). IRC and other online chats are tough to pollute as well.

In short my prediction is in 10 years I will have completely ditched my email address and I will be giving friends my ICQ UIN/AOL Handle/Yahoo Handle in lieu of it.

Ok I'm through ranting, time for everyone else to.

here's a good mail filter

[juggaleaux]

On my Yahoo! mail account I set up a filter that sends anything with "unsubscribe" to the trash automatically. My spam went WAY down. :)

Re:"First"?

[Rupert]

I was pretty heavily into Usenet in 1995. C&S caused a huge increase in the number of posts in the groups I subscribed to. Mostly, those were people complaining about C&S, but it was a pretty significant event, even for netizens.

C&S huge innovation was that it *wasn't* cross-posted. They left a bot running all weekend to post identical messages to every newsgroup. That's why it was such a bitch to cancel them all.

Re:"First"?

[no longer myself]

Heck, I remember when it hit FIDO net during my old BBS days over 10 years ago. I distictly remember objecting to it back then, and was flamed for trying to limit "freedom of speech".

Re:That's Who

[Spetiam]

seriously, just out of curiosity, has anyone here actually bought something because of a spam ad or know somebody that did?

but here's the real question: why??

Re:"First"?

[Cowboy Bebop]

I have a much earlier spam. And I bet people here could reply with even earlier ones.

Oh, I remember it well

[Call Me Black Cloud]

Back in the halcyon days of grad school, this...this...ad! shows up in a newsgroup I favored. I dashed off an e-mail them (several, in fact) including many full copies of their post. I encouraged my fellow students to do the same.

We were quite happy to learn later the flood of mail took down their server. Yes, there I was riding the crest of the spam fighting movement without even knowing it. And at the time it was just a break from Netrek and posting via anon.penet.fi...

This message has no point. Just some memories of an old guy. Did I ever tell you about programming the Commodore PETs in the math department in high school? It was like this...

To much admin time on email before spam

[chamilto0516]

C&S invented the SPAM concept on Usenet. I remember that it was not only meant to hit each group but that it was not cross-posted correctly (at all) and that you couldn't delete/kill/read(to be marked read) that message in one group and have it gone from all the other groups. This was a double no-no and wrong on more than one level.

Since SPAM has propogated on to email, I am reminded of my favorite lines out of the Unix Haters Handbook.

The thing that gets me is that one of the arguments that landed Robert Morris, author of "the Internet Worm" in jail was all the sysadmins' time his prank cost. Yet the author of sendmail is still walking around free without even a U (for Unixery) branded on his forehead. -- An email from dm at hri dot com dated 12-Oct-93 in Garfinkle, Weise and Strassman; Unix Haters Handbook; May, 1994; IDG Books Worldwide

The interesting thing is that all this was published before the C&S Usenet spamming. How much time are admins spending on email management now?

SPAM has killed Usenet's usefullness for me. At least filters like Popfile and such are keeping SPAM over email bearable; even if they are not fixing the problem.

Re:"First"?

[chickenwing]

The idea of free speech is that people who you do not agree with have the right to express their views.

It is interesting that we have come to a time where corporations (legally equivilant to humans, but with out any of the responsibilities) have more free speech rights than people (remember, money is legally equivalent to speech, but without any of the responsibilies).

So, non-taxpaying legal person entities have the right to use their free speech to help elect our leaders.

Translation...

Corporations are allowed to use money to install a figurehead to help further disempower and enslave regular people.

Remember the great promise of the internet is that any regular person can put their silly ideas up for other regular people to read (like i'm doing now). Just wait until the free-marketers allow one company to own every switch between you and anyone else, then we will see.

I guess this seems a little off topic, but I guess what really bothers me is when corporate entities cry that their free speech is being impeded upon, especially when they use that power to silence real flesh and blood human-beings.