30th anniversary of spam

This came as a forward from my son...not as a burst of spam:

The date should be circled in black on your computer's calendar: the scourge of internet spam is 30-years-old today.

On May 3 1978, Gary Thuerk, a marketing man for DEC, a now defunct American computer company, sent what is thought to be the world's first junk e-mail. The unsolicited message was delivered to a mere 393 users of Arpanet, the US government network that would become the internet, but paved the way for trillions of future missives hawking counterfeit Viagra and dubious get-rich-quick schemes.

Today an estimated nine out of ten e-mails are unsolicited junk – accounting for about 100 billion messages every day and spam has become hugely lucrative, both for the racketeers that send messages and the firms that defend against them.

Comments

[Ryan]

And, judging by your recent comments over on the right, Jay, comment spam is celebrating the 30th anniversary in fine fashion.

My personal blog battle is being waged against whoever is behind the "wow gold" spamming industry. I get about 100 of those a day.