The History of Spam as Net Abuse

Lets look at some history of spam to see where it started...

If you are on the Internet these days at all you have experienced some level of spam in your email account.

I know on one of my email accounts over half the emails I get are spam. They try to sell me things from diet pills to the latest scam of that I have won some sweepstakes from some little known part of the world.

History of Spam

(Let me say first that the name spam was derived from a Monty Python skit.)

The earliest recorded incident of spam was the advertising message about the new model of computers by Digital Equipment Corporation that was sent to some 393 people on the ARPANET by Gary Thuerk in 1978. It was not called spam at this time though.

On March 5, 1994 the first known major incident of commercial spam occurred. The lawyers Martha Siegel and Laurence Canter, who were married, started utilizing bulk Usenet postings to promote immigration law services. This was called Green Card Spam because of the subject line done in these postings. These lawyers were defiant as far as their critics claiming the right of free speech. They also published a book titled “How to Make a Fortune on the Information Superhighway”.

Within a short time the main efforts of spam went to email as it is to this day. One company that brought email spam into the limelight is Cyber Promotions and all the spamming that Sanford Wallace did 1990s. This really brought the problem to the public.

Spam has been in present day is used to spread the trojan horses, computer viruses, and other harmful software. Some of the spam is intended to trap you into giving out personal information that can be used for identity theft. Sometimes they are just trying to get money from people by tricking them into sending money for one scam or another.

Robert Alan Soloway was arrested May 31, 2007 by the U.S. Officials. He was in the list of the top ten spammers for the world, and charges were brought against him for 35 criminal counts that included: wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering, email fraud, and aggravated identity theft. Soloway actually used millions of computers to accomplish his crimes.

Solutions

Today there are solutions to spam. There are many programs that you can get to block spam coming to your email accounts. Some of the large companies that provide Internet service even block some of it for you before it can get to your account. Also it still stands today that if you do not know who sent you the email do not open the attachment for the safety of your computer.

Conclusion
Spam will probably continue for as long as the Internet exists but now you know a bit of the history of spam.

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