A Short History Of Spam
In the early days of the internet, spammers primarily targeted newsgroups on USENET, the Internet conferencing system. These are newsgroups that are prepared as forums to discuss particular themes. As electronic messaging systems advanced, it made feasible the practice of crossposting – posting the precise same warning to multiple newsgroups and other online forums.
Spammers were quick to embrace crossposting as a tool of their trade. Now, they may send the same electronic message to thousands of newsgroup members at the only once. Not only could they target a more substantial audience with one posting, but they also didn’t have to distinguish between the interests and focus of the person forums that they targeted. What’s more it cost them next to nothing to spam these newsgroups.
As email became an more and more widespread mode of correspondence, the spammers shifted their focus the massive audience that it made available to them. Mass emailing software soon became another essential tool of their trade, as they begun to make use of this application to send spam e-mails to thousands upon thousands of unwilling recipients.
The spam industry also adapted the accessible Internet technology to earn the “spambot”. A spambot is an automated program that will rove the web, “harvesting” email addresses from newsgroup postings and from other internet sites. It literally gathers thousands of email addresses in a single hour. These are compiled into bulk mailing lists with which the spammers can thousands of victims at a time.
The practice of sending out unsolicited, unwanted spam e-mails and junk postings came to be called ” junk e-mail.” The phrase is typically believed to have been derived from a British comedy skit by Monty Python, in which an eating place serves each meal with a side of spam. As a waitress emphasizes to a couple the accessibility of spam with every dish, a group of Viking patrons escape in song, singing “SPAM, SPAM, SPAM… lovely SPAM! great SPAM!” in a loud chorus. In the 80’s, the phrase was adopted to consult with the junk emails and postings, and the name stuck.
The earliest, most widely known incident of commercial spamming dates back to 1994. It involved two lawyers who spammed USENET to advertise their services as immigration lawyers. They later expanded their marketing efforts to add in email spam. The incident is typically said as the “Green Card Spam.”
This nefarious industry has since grown in leaps and bounds. Today, more than half of the trillion-plus emails that are sent and received are junk e-mail. Firstly, junk e-mail was in general advertising-related email. In more recent years, nonetheless, a particularly nasty crop of spammers has emerged, who send out their spam with nothing lower than malicious and|or criminal intent. Some send out spam that comprises viruses or malicious code. Others devise scams intended to defraud you of your cash. And then the’re those whose focus is identity theft.
Benign or malicious, commercial or criminal – spam has transformed the way we communicate electronically, and will carry on do so well into the near future and very likely beyond. Junk e-mail has in a very short space of time become a frequent, albeit unwanted, fact of online life.
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