Spam Is 30-Year-Old!

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Spam celebrated its 30th anniversary last weekend. The first unsolicited mass e-mail was sent to unsuspecting inboxes on May 3, 1978.

How it all began..

In 1978 Gary Thuerk, a marketing employee at a company called Digital Equipment Corporation (now owned by HP), sent a message to 393 users of the government-run network Arpanet, the predecessor to the internet we know today. The massage said:

“DIGITAL WILL BE GIVING A PRODUCT PRESENTATION OF THE NEWEST MEMBERS OF THE DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY; THE DECSYSTEM-2020, 2020T, 2060, AND 2060T…”

The email imposed two new products being demonstrated in California and invited recipients to see them in action. Thuerk reported immediate negative response to his advertisement which was all typed in Caps Lock for greater irritation, but also immediate results. He notified the Wall Street Journal this week that the email led to $12 million in sales.

Nowadays..

Spam takes up anywhere from 80 to 95 percent of all emails sent. Research companies say the wasted bandwidth from spam will add up to $140 billion worldwide this year alone. With increasingly sophisticated spamming techniques, tracking and stopping those unwanted ads is proving to be a tricky feat.

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