Spam invented 10 years ago today
 

Ten years ago today, spam as we know it was born. On 5 March 1994, a message was posted to some Usenet newsgroups by a law firm called Canter and Siegel, advertising their services for the U.S. Green Card lottery. It sounds mild enough today, but at the time that move and its follow-ups provoked increasing outrage across the Net. Many were appalled that "netiquette" - the unspoken rules that hitherto had maintained order in cyberspace - had been breached, sensing perhaps that things would never be the same again.

They were right, of course. By daring to try what no one had done before, those first spam messages opened the floodgates to the deluge we battle daily. When it became clear from Canter and Siegel's continued postings that their spams were being neither effectively blocked nor ignored, others soon followed in their footsteps.

More at
www.netcraft.com

Let's eat some cake.

I find it really hard to believe it only dates back to 1994 though. Aol, Compuserve, and other services date back further than that.

possibly, but what would you spam then?

but yuo might be right, its hard to argue with netcraft though

back then you could spam to get traffic to your tgp, porn site, or spam out scams.

i knew it

I'm going to celebrate by sending 1,000,000,000 emails to my "double opt-in" list. ;)

B

Thanks for the bit of history ! :thumbsup