On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 1:29 PM, steve harley <[email protected]> wrote: > on 2014-01-04 13:52 Bruce Walker wrote > >> In 1984 when the 645 was released the Internet was a very >> small network and didn't yet include AOL. Not even the first spam had >> been mailed by then. > > > just a little reality check - this slightly predates my introduction to the > 'net: > > "Earliest documented spam (although the term had not yet been coined) was a > message advertising the availability of a new model of Digital Equipment > Corporation computers sent by Gary Thuerk to 393 recipients on ARPANET in > 1978. Rather than send a separate message to each person, which was the > standard practice at the time, he had an assistant, Carl Gartley, write a > single mass e-mail. Reaction from the net community was fiercely negative, > but the spam did generate some sales." > > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_(electronic)#History_of_Internet_spam>
Yeah, I do remember reading that now. I was thinking of the infamous Green Card Lottery spam, although strictly speaking that was a USENET posting. I was there to witness that one first hand. It inspired my future career in anti-spam research. Your spam predates my net access too. I was on email (UNIX v6 PWB) in '79, then my company (AES Data) got limited net access in 1982 or so, via UUCP. For some years I was aesat!bmw (anyone else here remember bang-paths?). -- -bmw -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
