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. ;)"

Comments

Cheap fun

[erick99]

Spam, if that is what it was (as opposed to junk mail) was a bit more costly to Cunard than to modern day spammers. If he had not the cost of the telegrams he might have sent the sales pitch to the entire assembly rather than the "select" group. Junk mail is cheaper still than telegrams but not nearly as cheap as email spam where you can reach out and touch millions for a pittance. So long as spam is that inexpensive, and a least a few souls click to their way to more hair, a longer penis, $35,000,000 from a besieged politico in Nigeria, then we will continue to have spam. Short of taxing email (would that even work?), spam is here to stay. No need to repay them, they seemingly pay themselves very well, and, possibly , at your expense.

Cheers,

Erick

Re:Cheap fun

[rokzy]

I hate this defeatist attitude.

there is no reason why spam cannot be defeated. in principle it's one of the easiest problems. much easier than hunger or aids. the problem is just that lots of people in charge won't get off their arse and design a new protocol.

maybe because there's no money in it. pharmaceutical companies hate cures, they much prefer treatments. you only sell a cure once, but treatments last a lifetime.

Re:Cheap fun

[back_pages]

Oh yeah, laziness and greed are gonna be SO easy to just stamp out. It's definitely not as hard as, say, using the farking shift key.

Spam is not a technological problem, it's a social problem. Find me a widespread social problem that was easy to fix and I'll show you a magical fantasy land with unicorns and easy living.

Re:Cheap fun

[znode]

but make a protocol that doesn't allow anonymous sending of mail and you defeat spam.

Show me a non-spoofable (or so difficult to spoof it would not be profitable sending spam through) protocol that doesn't allow anonymous sending of mail, yet still allows normal communications*, and I'll send you a copy of Duke Nukem Forever. On a stick.

*i.e. not a whitelist, because then legitimate but not-yet-on-your-whitelist people can't contact you

Re:Cheap fun

[TheoMurpse]

I'm going to start with an assertion of my beliefs:
Everyone has the right to run their own SMTP server.

Following from this, everyone would be able to send email.

Following this, everyone would be able to send spam.

How do you stop the spam, without removing something you might argue is a right? You stop peoples ability to run SMTP servers, then you stop some people from using the email of their choice. Slashdotters, how many of you HAVE your own SMTP servers? I'm pretty sure a lot of you do.

Also, remember that there are ISPs that don't provide email, so you either turn to some crappy MSNesque online email, or you host your own SMTP.

Now, you might say "well what about that verification thing so we KNOW who is sending the email?"

well, why can't i write a trojan that is a spam-sending trojan? just write a trojan that creates its own SMTP server, and voila!

Please someone correct me if i'm wrong in this.

Well, not nitpicking

[savagedome]

But, surprisingly, the first spam wasn't sent via e-mail

Shouldn't that be "But, unsurprisingly, the first spam wasn't sent via e-mail".
It would be really a surprise if they sent spam by email 100 years ago. Don't you think?!

Spam - More than a nuisance

[cato kaze]

We joke and complain about spam, but personally I am wondering how much the internet can take before things just start to slow down drastically. Spam is increasing, not decreasing, and it is most certainly doing so with or faster than the pace of technology. We really need to find some solutions to this problem before spam becomes so widespread that the only way to fight it is to increast bandwith. (I don't mean just email spam, I mean popups and flash banners and such. The bandwith they take up must be massive, I'm amazed that the internet still functions with all the waste)

Re:Spam - More than a nuisance

[erick99]

That is an interesting point that seems obvious but I don't see it expressed that often. If spam really did get so bad that the Internet was noticeably affected, I mean to the point that big businesses were losing big money, I bet a very creative solution would be forthcoming pretty quickly. I think that is what it migh take. -erick

Where there's any universal medium, there's ads

[LostCluster]

There are really two kinds of person-to-person communication medium...

- An open network, where anybody can send to anybody... and that means you can get messages from people you never heard of, for better or worse. Lowlife types are allowed to thrive and spam away.
- A closed network where in order to stay in the club, you've gotta play by the rules. Lowlifes are bounced out on their first offenses. This keeps the trouble away, but it also limits the number of people who can reach you over that channel.

um.....

[Lord_Dweomer]

Wouldn't that make it the first JUNKMAIL and not spam? I thought spam (aside from the food) was solely tied to email.

Time to get tough

[buchalka]

We need to get tough with them.

Charge them, arrest them.

This is a good start

Of course this was not just spammers but they are all as bad as each other if you ask me.

Cunard sending spam?

[john_sheu]

Or not. What they did was more akin to direct-mailing (or perhaps even more specific than that). They had a target audience, and by being limited by cost, they could only send to the select of that target audience. Now, Spam is essentially free. In fact, there is no "target audience" per se; the demographics of those who reply to spam is representative of much more diversity than those who Cunard targeted.

Nice job hammering Wikipedia for no reason

[Peter Cooper]

The link in the story has nothing to do with the text used.. there's nothing on that page about spam being 100 years old. Worse, it's a link to an other useful resource which could do without being hammered by tens of thousands of Slashdot readers. Remember the recent stories about Wikipedia being overloaded on Slashdot recently?

Re:Thanks Billy

[buchalka]

One thing I rarely see mentioned is that spam is mostly micrososft's fault.

What a pile of crap. While I am no MS supporter blaming Microsoft is pure and simply wrong.

Blame the people DOING the spamming, blame the people who don't keep up to date with the latest patches (which will dramatically reduce the chance of your box becoming owned).

While you at it blame the people trying to own the box.

Those are owned because Billy and the Boys from Redmond simply have no idea how to build an operating system

Bzzzt. Wrong. See above. (This from a linux advocate).

From Wikipedia

[craXORjack]

Some of the "firsts" accomplished by Cunard include:

• First transatlantic passenger service (Britannia, 1840)
• First passenger ship to be lit by electricity (Servia, 1881)
• First twin-screw ocean liner (Campania, 1893)
• First steam turbine engines in a passenger liner (Carmania, 1905)
• First gymnasium and health centre aboard a ship (Franconia, 1911)
• Largest passenger ship (until 1996) (Queen Elizabeth, 1940)
• Largest passenger ship (Queen Mary 2, 2004)

But I don't see where it says they were the first to spam. Anyone have the link to that?

Proves the Difficulty of the Solution

[SpamJunkie]

I would assume that even such early spam was soon frowned upon. In its infancy unsolicited communicaiton was probably novel but it wouldn't take long to become the burden it is today. But because it has remained a burden for so long proves its success.

It is no more ingenious than a brute force attack. However, wherever else brute force fails it succeeds in the marketplace. If we tighten our email schemes, turn off pop-ups in our browsers and so on it stands to reason that spam will simply evolve, not die out. It has survived the shift from telegrams to email and all steps in between, it will likely not be quenched by anything less than a superior competitor: something that provides the same service - pairing potential buyers with sellers of questionable goods - yet isn't a burden to anyone who isn't interested.

Much like factoring prime numbers and brute forcing encryption it may well be impossible to replace spam with something "better". But if it will be stopped that's the only way.