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

[plover]

No, very few idiots actually buy from spammers.

Mostly, the idiots are the vendors who hire the spammers. They buy the spamming service for $60.00 for 10000 emails. The spammers invest $200 in "fake" purchases from the vendor. The vendor is so excited he forks over $1000 for 200,000 emails. The spammer sends them out, and pockets the $860, not caring if the vendor makes another sale or not. If he thinks the fish is really gullible, he might string him along with another investment of $100-200, in hopes of landing another $2000 or so.

Spammers are thieves, they lie, cheat and hack their way into our inboxes. What makes you think they treat their paying customers any better?

Re:Cheap fun

[plover]

No, even enforcing fully traceable spam and passing draconian laws won't stop it.

Most spam today comes from zombie PCs, not from giant spam servers. Spammers have hackers infest thousands of PCs with worms, and use those to spew forth their vendors' get rich quick schemes.

OK, you made spam traceable. So now what? Are the feds going to bust in on Aunt Millie just because she didn't install Service Pack 2, hot fix KB123456789, and so allowed spammers to use her name to send their crap?

It might mean Comcast shuts down Aunt Millie's PC from sending email. Or not -- maybe the zombie operator uses Aunt Millie's PC to generate a new Hotmail or gmail account, and sends forth the bilge from there? Extra steps that get Aunt Millie in hotter water, but do nothing to the spammers or their hacking minions.

Technological answers only stop them one zombie at a time. Sure, you can disinfect Aunt Millie's box, but by the time it's patched, both Uncle Fred and Grandma Anna's PCs have been wormed. Spam laws be damned, you're not going to be a popular government for jailing Millie, Fred and Anna for what amounts to a "failure to understand and apply Windows XP Service Pack 2's cumulative security patch for the week ending 9/18."

It's like any other crypto or security problem. Security is a perimeter defense, and it will always be attacked at the weakest point. Cryptologically hardened email will simply mean we spend more CPU cycles verifying that this spam did indeed come from Aunt Millie. ( And, the converse should indicate that the spammers have a weak point too -- I believe it's somewhere south of their pelvises, and north of their thighs. Apply the appropriate amount of pressure and see how much spam shows up tomorrow ... :-)

What a Cunard

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd kill him if he weren't already dead.

Are Caveman's drawings spam?

[joeldixon66]

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.

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?!

Hmmmm.

[Sevn]

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.

I have the kind of love for spammers that makes me want to light them on fire and throw them down a flight of stairs. That's love baby.

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

Re:Spam - More than a nuisance

[ryanw]

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.

I would imagine the traffic of porn and usenet far outweigh spam and is also increasing at an exponential rate.

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.

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

[joeldixon66]

And which one is Slashdot again?

I guess that it's the former - as I'm still able to post here.

Define "spam"

[Jonboy X]

Google says:
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. ;P

My cupboard...

[Suit_N_Tie]

The Spam in my cupboard is only 50 years old, so I guess I am doing well...

First unwanted advertisements

[scoser]

The first unwanted advertisements were probably scrawled on cave walls and advertised "Atok's fine-carved spears, extra cheap! Kill many deer and bison!!!!!" a few hundred-thousand years ago, if we're going to get all technical about it.

Re:First unwanted advertisements

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it more likely it was Atok's fine spear enlargers.

Practical uses for spammers

[stox]

1) Ebola research
2) Cost effective replacements for crash test dummies.
3) Cost effective replacements for animals in cosmetic testing.
4) Cost effective replacement for ballistics gel.

Inflation

[ProfessionalCookie]

Of course dollar for dollar the first spam sent was quite a lot cheaper. But when you account for inflation and the reduction in volume per can (from roughly 0.00084 Volkswagens to roughly 2 iPods) the price is actually $0.40USD/Can more expensive

Don't believe me? Check my references.

Yea, sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

For all we know, illicit advertising could have started even back in as far as the caveman days...

There was once a caveman named Ug who would hurl rocks from far away at unsuspecting dwellers. Each rock would have a pictures etched into it depicting a caveman holding a shield to protect himself from flying rocks. One day, Ug threw a rock from far away at another caveman, Og, with the usual picture etched into the rock. Hit and startled by the incomming rock, Og picked it up, gazed at the picture, scratched his head, and looked at Ug. Ug threw another rock, which this time hit Og right on the head. Angry, Og threw the rock back at Ug, only to see Ug hold up a shield and deflect the rock.

Og was very impressed. He and his tribe of other cavemen then walked over to Ug. Ug held up a picture showing himself handing another caveman the shield, and the other caveman handing him lots of furs. Og smiled, took the shield, and hit Ug over the head with his club, killing him. So Og and his tribe feasted on Ug, striking fear into the hearts of marketers who were not strong enough to defend themselves against a bunch of angry cavemen. Such a utopia prospered for generations, until the invention of the telephone.

Spam IS NOT just email

[intx13]

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?

I can hear it on the tele

[Anonymous Coward]

o--o o -o oo ooo / o -o o-oo o- o-o --o o -- o -o - / o--o oo o-oo o-oo ooo

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?

Where's TFA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Without an article to substantiate the claim, maybe mkavanagh2 simply sent a fake story to win a bet.

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).

If only I wasn't vegan...

[aussersterne]

I'd say that we should repay them with SPAM.

That's right... a vigilante "SPAM squad" manning a truck carrying dozens of tons of SPAM, along with a delivery system not unlike a tree chipper that can accept SPAM by the ton and spray greasy SPAM puree hundreds of feet.

The SPAM squad would pull up to the houses of known spammers and douse the house, car, grounds, mailbox, and anything else in sight in 6-12 inches of greasy salted pork goo that would take years to clean up. If the weight of the flying SPAM puree hitting their front windows just "happend" to break them and fill their living room with chunks of SPAM as well, by "accident," that would just be too bad.

Say, 50-60 tons of SPAM per spammer in flash vigilante "actions" out to keep each of them busy for a few weeks (months? years?) at least trying to clean up their persons, personal effects, and lives and drive the smell (and flies) away. Just spray-and-go and let them come stumbling out, slipping and sliding and cursing, realizing that they have finally gotten their comeuppance.

In a perfect world...

[dracken]

....Spammers would be caught, jailed and made to share their cell with people who have enlarged their penis, taken viagra and are looking for a new relationship :^).

-Dracken

No, it was not Spam

[rfc1394]

It would have been Spam if the Cunard line had sent the telegrams collect!

Visit a spammer message board - see the felonies

[Animats]

For a good time, visit this spammer bulletin board. "Make Big Money with Spam". There's enough criminal activity described there to put some people in Club Fed for many years. This is a window into organized crime. Some excerpts:

• 07-07-2004, 05:25 PM
  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?

• adamrich is Offline:
  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.

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?

Not true

[HBI]

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.

Ah, the mandatory crackpot conspiracy theory, eh?

[Moraelin]

Let me tell you a little secret: I actually was on the Soviet side of the Iron Curtain, in the bad old days of the Cold War. It also happens that several family friends were doctors.

Guess what? If such wonder drugs ever existed, the soviets (and the whole soviet block) didn't use them either. Wonder why. Maybe because such wonder drugs only ever existed in crackpot conspiracy theories, but never In Real Life?

And don't tell me it was also the "evil" westen pharma corporations who were stopping the Soviets from using their own medicine. (I don't remember the West stoping the Soviets from building nukes or breeding hot strains of smallpox, for example.)

I'll tell you something funny: the whole Eastern European block had a very liberal policy when it came to antibiotics. And plenty of corruption. One way or the other, you could get pretty much any medicine you bloody pleased, whether you actually needed it or not. (Or whether it could even work at all for your disease or not.) Kids were routinely stuffed full of antibiotics and sulphamids at the slightest sign of a cold.

Yet noone ever got such a miracle cure. Even there, when you did get prescribed medicine, it was 3-4 times a day, for a week or more. Just like in the West. Go figure.

And if you needed an operation, they didn't just sprinkle some magic potion. They used sterilized equipment and aseptic rooms, just like in the West. Go figure.

So please spare me the bullshit conspiracy theories.

There is no magic wand that you can just wave and make the illness go away. There never was, never will be. Not on the Western side, not on the Soviet side, and not in China either.

And if there was one, those same pharma companies could patent it and have a monopoly on magic wands for 20 years straight. The one who had a magic wand that cures, say, diabetes, could sell it for a fortune per milligram, and make one helluva lot more profit from that than from being the 100'th guy selling cheap generic insulin.

Plus if there was one, what do you thing would happen the first time a pharma executive, or doctor or pharmacist got a fatal disease? Do you expect me to believe they'd just patiently await their own death, rather than threaten their profits? Better yet, that millions of doctors and pharmacists _all_ keep the secret rather than save their own lives or the lives of their children.

Dude, there is no amount of money in the world that could buy that.