Happy birthday to an unwelcome guest - 30 years since the first junk e-mail was sent
Security researchers from across the UK are giving a tongue-in-cheek salute to the 30th anniversary of the first spam message. Gary Theurk is apparently the person who gave birth to the first junk e-mail. At the time, he was an employee at the Digital Equipment Company and sent a message on Arpanet to hundreds of fellow users on 1 May 1978.
The message advertised the latest DEC computer systems, and received a less than enthusiastic reaction from fellow users. Arpanet has since evolved into the modern day internet, and DEC was purchased by Compaq and later HP.
So, 30 years on, why does spam still exist? Security firm Sophos noted recently that some 10 per cent of respondents to a recent survey admitted to purchasing spammed products.
“The truth is that, much as we all say we hate spam, if an e-mail for a product or service arrives that we are interested in, we buy it. If users didn’t buy the goods, spam would soon dry up. The spammers wouldn’t make any money and their activities would stop,” said Derrick Cameron, MD of Eximium.
“What amuses me about most of the spam I receive,” adds Derrick, “is that I have no idea what it is meant to be selling me! I’ve always been at a loss to understand how or why this type of spam seems to be growing.
“What started out as a single message 30 years ago has grown into a global problem that clogs inboxes the world over and makes returning from holiday that little bit more bothersome,” adds Derrick.
This entry was posted on Monday, May 19th, 2008 at 12:38 pm and is filed under Business Advice, IT Consultancy, News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
