On
May 3, 1978 Gary Thuerk—cursed be
his name and all of his decedents to the seventh generation—sent the first unsolicited mass business electronic message shilling
a new computer model from Digital Equipment Corporation to 393 West Coast ARPANET users, most of whom
were ticked off. But he sold a handful
of pricy computers. A business model was
born.
Commercial
messages had been sent before, but
each message was sent individually.
Thurek, evidently a lazy jerk, casually asked a subordinate—probably a
harried secretary—to use an ARPANET
directory and just send ‘em all out at once.
Around
the same time nerds with access to
valuable computer time were playing multi-user Dungeons and Dragons games in chat rooms. At least one of them came up with the idea of
flooding the rooms with nuisance messages
shutting them down and preventing them from playing the game—a malicious use of
mass messaging.
Both
developments were copied, slowly at first, but picking up steam as more users
hooked up to what became known as the Internet.
The
term Spam for such activity came a
bit later, in the early ‘80’s. It was
first applied to the then popular Bulletin
Board discussion groups. Participants
wishing to silence another began to type the word Spam scrolling in long chains, forcing opponents’ entries far down, and
hopefully out of notice. Spam was used
in reference to the classic Monty Python
sketch where a waitress recites the menu—consisting entirely of the ersatz canned meat product accompanied by a
chorus of Vikings.
It
did not take long for the term to be applied to flooding Usenet newsgroups with unwanted messages. At first it was sort of pranking—Star Trek fans vs. Star Wars sort of thing. But
it turned malicious 1993 in response to the Automated Retroactive Minimal
Moderation (ARMM), software
intended to allow Usenet newsgroup administrators to somewhat regulate
abusive postings and ban offenders. Many
regarded this as censorship and in response Usenet was flooded with mass
multiple messages which were characterized as Spam.
By the mid 90’s increasingly Usenet was also being
flooded by Make Money Fast chain letters.
Spam on a really massive commercial scale was
credited to attorneys Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel who flooded newsgroups
with advertising for their immigration
law practice. The so-called Green
Card spam was wide spread and harshly reviled. Defiant the husband and wife lawyer teams
attacked their critics as censors and
anti-capitalism. They also set themselves up as
self-appointed experts in e-marketing authoring
How to Make a Fortune on the Information
Superhighway, which
they marketed, naturally by Spam messages.
As the Usenet and newsgroups faded with the rise in
popularity of e-mail spurred by America on Line (AOL) and then outfits
like Yahoo!, spam migrated there.
Soon elaborate programs were developed to harvest
e-mail address and mass e-mail lists were being peddled to big commercial users
for huge amounts of money. There became
a technological race between e-mail service providers and spammers to filter or
ban the messages.
Today a majority of most e-mail can broadly be categorized
as Spam. More if messages sent to people
who inadvertently agreed to a “business relationship” are added to those
totally unsolicited. It has literally driven
users, particularly younger folks, away from e-mail entirely in favor of instant messaging, phone texting, and social
media platforms.
And the spammers?
Well, they keep finding new ways to get in your face whether you like it
or not.
Happy birthday, indeed!
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