Thirty years ago next week, Gary Thuerk, a marketer at the now-defunct computer firm Digital Equipment Corporation, sent an email to 393 users of Arpanet, the US government-run computer network that eventually became the internet. It was the first spam email ever. That commercial message, sent on 3 May 1978, drew a swift and negative reaction. Recipients complained directly to Thuerk, who had made no attempt to hide his identity, and DEC was reprimanded by the Arpanet administrators.
Nevertheless, the email was a portent of things to come. Today, spam makes up 80 to 90% of all emails sent—around 120 billion messages per day—and is a multi-billion dollar industry.
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Comments
Why is that first DEC spam always mentioned? There wasn't a straight line from Gary to the modern botnet operators—there was really only a tiny trickle of impoliteness between 1978 and 1994. Today's spammers have almost nothing in common with the spammers of ten years ago, much less thirty years ago.
When was the first botnet? That I'd like to know.