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Spam Is 30 Years Old

Posted by kdawson on from the happy-birthday-now-die-already dept.

holy_calamity writes "New Scientist commemorates spam's 30th anniversary, a week from today. The first spam message — archived here — was sent to 393 users of ARPANET on May 2, 1978 by someone from computing pioneers DEC. They had to type in all the addresses by hand first."

6 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. Look who's 70 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    For those wondering, the original spam (nee Hormel spiced ham) turned 70 last year.

  2. Poor poor lonely RMS... by arkham6 · · Score: 4, Informative

    It looks like RMS was looking for love back then too!

    10-MAY-78 23:20:30-PDT,2250;000000000001
    Mail-from: MIT-AI rcvd at 7-MAY-78 2316-PDT
    Date: 8 MAY 1978 0213-EDT
    From: RMS at MIT-AI (Richard M. Stallman)
    Subject: MSGGROUP# 697 Some Thoughts about advertising
    To: stefferud at USC-ISI
    Redistributed-To: [ISI]<MsgGroup>Mailing.List;154:
    Redistributed-By: STEFFERUD (connected to MSGGROUP)
    Redistributed-Date: 8 MAY 1978

    ---EDIT--

    4) Would a dating service for people on the net be "frowned upon" by DCA? I hope not. But even if it is, don't let that stop you from notifying me via net mail if you start one.

    1. Re:Poor poor lonely RMS... by AndyST · · Score: 3, Informative

      It looks like RMS was looking for love back then too! well... http://www.stallman.org/extra/personal.html
  3. Re:usenet spam - greencard lawyers by Intron · · Score: 4, Informative

    The script was written in perl, of course.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canter_&_Siegel

    The article has notes about their numerous ethical lapses also.

    --
    Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
  4. Re:One Thing That's Changed by Gotung · · Score: 3, Informative

    The "reply-to:" field is used by most email clients as the "Sender". You can fill out the reply-to with anything you want. No exploits needed.

  5. Re:Stallman --- by Jherek+Carnelian · · Score: 4, Informative

    Heh, nice pro spam message by RMS there. Of course the context was a little bit different in 1978 than it was more than a decade later when the Green Card Lawyers really kicked off the phenomenon.

    Kind of the like a neighborhood where just about everybody knows everybody and thus everyone is accountable for any antisocial behaviour on their part.