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Spam Turns 100, By One Reckoning
mkavanagh2 writes "Spam is 100 years old today! But, surprisingly, the first spam wasn't sent via e-mail. In fact, 100 years ago, Cunard sent out telegrams to selected (rich) members of the British social elite, advertising tickets on a new liner, and becoming the first spammer. Let us all take out a moment to consider how to best 'repay' the spammers who followed for the 100 years of 'joy' they have given us. ;)"
In terms of Internet spamming - it's closer to 26 years old - link.
I can't see anything about Cunard from the submitter's link.
Google says:
;P
Spam: Unsolicited "junk" e-mail sent to large numbers of people to promote products or services.
Note the e- in front of "mail" in the defintion. If it ain't e-mail, then it's just plain old junk mail.
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
100 years ago they probably called it Invasive Nuisance®.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
From Wikipidia: "In this article and those related, the term spamming is used broadly to refer to all of these behaviors, regardless of medium and commercial intent."
Notice the regardless of medium.Personally, I consider spam to be the automatic supply of unwanted information. For that reason I wouldn't consider mailing lists and telemarketers as spammers. You signed up for the mailing list and telemarketing is not an automatic process. Besides, telemarketing provides (provided) a lot of people with jobs (even if bad jobs, some people need the money more than the good job).
For instance: You can be spammed with junk mail. A channel can be spammed by bots. You can be spammed with emails. You can't be spammed over the phone unless a recording is calling you. You can be spammed in the grocery store (oh wait, that's different...)
Of course, this is just my personal way of looking at it, so what do I know?In case any of you were wondering where the widely applied term "spam" came from here's an informative link
This link gives Hormel's position on the use of the term "spam" and the history behind it.
Nugster is Offline:
Junior Member
Join Date: Jul 2004
Reliable Proxie service hourly updated
Hello, I am providing a very good proxie service with hourly updates.
each members list contains 1,000-2,000 working proxies at all times.
all you do is load the list into your mailer llike DM mailer uses links to get proxies set it to hourly updates and wala hands free mailing.
we offer the service for a weekly price of $600 with discount for montly memberships which monthly is $2,200 a $200 savings.
We are here to stay & aim to please. Our service is staffed by a full time crew of 10 people who are constantly maintaing our lists by hand 24/7 to ensure working proxies, unlike others who have there lists checked by computers only not acutally checking for smtp enable. ...
Need money laundering services?
Junior Member
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 11
processing Quote: Originally Posted by excelbru
Can someone advise me a reliable bulk proof credit card processor not shutting me down after the first complaints?
...
We can do such processing for you. Take a look at our site www.oxbill.com
And much, much more.
If you deal with spam, it's worth some time spent visiting that site. There's a whole criminal infrastructure to support spamming. You'll find "bullet proof web hosting", domain laundering, credit card laundering, virus/worm distributors selling access to zombie machines, mortgage lead buyers, and "pharmacy" operators.
Yes, it's been reported to CERT/Homeland Security and NANAE.
I would imagine the traffic of porn and usenet far outweigh spam and is also increasing at an exponential rate.
Last I checked, the majority of all Usenet traffic is spam.
I only take one issue with your post: I don't believe that offering proxy lists for sale is necessarily a bad thing. There are any number of reasons why someone may want to use a proxy to visit a certain site. Concealing sexual preferences when visiting a gay or lesbian porn site, trying to read up at the English version of Al-Jazeera without leaving digital footprints, etc.
Proxies are generally web only in nature. Of the more than 100,000 wide-open proxies that I've cataloged over the past several years, only a slight percentage of them were able to relay arbitrary connections (e.g. HTTP CONNECT protocol). The vast majority of proxies only relay standard web requests, and are harmless as far as spam is concerned. In fact when Joe Jared's Osirusoft RBL was running, my proxy database fed directly into its RBL (proxy.relays.osirusoft.com), just to prevent any possibility of the proxies being used to spam those who subscribed to RBLs/DNSBLs.
It's unfortunate that the media, as of late, has taken to calling infected/trojanned Windows machines which relay spam "proxies," instead of "zombies," a term widely attributed to Steve Gibson at GRC. When GRC was DDoS'd a couple of years ago, he took to calling the trojanned machines "zombies," and the media went with it full force. More recently, the media has been calling them "proxies," which creates negative connotations that aren't necessarily deserved. Yes, there is the occasional proxy which leaves itself wide open to HTTP CONNECT, but most proxies have nothing to do with spam.
Of course, if some idiot is spamming spammer message boards trying to sell proxies, he deserves whatever he gets. There have been clear cases where alleged spammers such as Jamie Baillie have attempted to buy proxies that they can spam through. However, I chalk this up as the exception to the norm, and in most of these cases the spammer was clearly foiled anyway. The above link is an extreme example of how spammers get "victimized" themselves, and start bitching holy hell, trying to buy proxy lists.
Please, don't equate proxies with spam. Most of them are simply being used to facilitate anonymous browsing, and this is an ability which needs to be maintained as long as possible.
Now if you'd mentioned the Lusitania, on the other hand...*evil grin*
Nope. Not Even Close.
Postal "spam" has existed since the
post office was first founded. In
the 19th Century, the typical
addressee would be:
The Best Farmer In
Smallville, Missouri
or
Progressive Businessman In
Littletown, Iowa
The worst was before stamps,
when all letters were
sent collect. If someone was dumb
enough to claim one of these, they
paid the postage!
Hmmm, kinda familiar.....
The Lusitania sinking in 1915 had nothing to do with the US' declaration of war in 1917.
That had more to do with the Zimmermann note promising Mexico territorial adjustments in exchange for a declaration of war against the US, as well as sinkings of US flag merchant vessels in the North Atlantic.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I've had signed spam before. The signature was (obviously) broken but I was surprised someone had even thought of it.
I guess some people filter on the presence of a signature.
Now you have to filter on it's validity as well. Bit of a problem when strangers mail you...
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
The problem with curing a disease is that you have to kill some cells which aren't that fundamentally different from the normal cells in your body. In the case of viral diseases, they _are_ your normal cells, only slightly reprogrammed by the virus.
Hence most of the medicine is actually mildly toxic. Almost all of it, in high enough concentrations, can cause severe damage to the liver, kidneys, and/or other body parts.
So the trick to treating a disease, is to maintain a concentration just high enough to sorta harm the bacteria over time, but low enough so the normal cells aren't _too_ harmed. Hence taking small doses 3 times a day, for a week or more.
A dose which could kill all bacteria or mutated cells in one pill, would have an effect on your liver comparable to a shotgun blast at close range.
Point in case: my own mom, who basically stuffed herself with antibiotics and sulphamids back then, is now struggling just to stay alive. Her liver is basically destroyed. Maybe it's not a coincidence. She also thought that she was smarter than the doctors back then. Looking in retrospect, maybe she shouldn't have been that smart, eh?
So maybe the next time a doctor tells you some pills to take 3 times a day... maybe it's not some evil pharma conspiracy. Maybe the poor bugger is just trying to not cause permanent damage.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.