May 1, 1978. That is the date that three hundred ninety-three people received an email advertising Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). The email appeared to users on ARPANET, something most kids these days have no clue about, yet some users online still recall it with fondness. The email from DEC, sent by Gary Thuerk, is recorded in history as the first spam message. Now, thirty years later, Spam is still alive and kicking, and many are asking why.
Spam, 30 years and still leaving a bad taste in your mouth. (IMG: J.Anderson)
Gary sent the email as a marketing opportunity, with the hope to make some sales. Most Spam these days still wants to sell something, that or steal something. The scary fact is that eleven percent of the people surveyed recently by Sophos admitted to buying something from these junk emails.
"Users are always just a click away from spam - from weight loss medications to drugs used to improve sexual performance, spam is a burden on all of us," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos. "What's worse is that a lot of spam is deliberately malicious today, aiming to steal your bank account information or install malware. People who buy goods sold via spam are merely perpetuating the problem of junk email for all users and must be stopped."
It’s no wonder Spam is still alive, it still works. How do you fix this? Sophos wants to make people pledge to not buy from Spam, that’s fine and dandy, but it really doesn’t solve anything. No, as long as there is a method of exploitation in email Spam will remain. Phishing, a famous and popular means of victimization, because it’s cheap and easy to blast out millions of emails. Malware, delivery is a snap, send out a few million bulk emails, and you can count on tens of thousands of hits.
Thanks to one marketing email, sent in 1978, recent data from several security vendors estimate that anywhere from 90-95% of all email is Spam. “Gary Thuerk could never have imagined what he was starting when he sent that mass email 30 years ago. There is a generation of people today who have never worked in a world without spam clogging up their inboxes,” added Cluley. “The internet community needs to do what it can to make sure that spam doesn't celebrate a 40th or 50th birthday.”
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