History of spamming

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[edit] The Dawn of Spam

A possible 19th century mass telegraph
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A possible 19th century mass telegraph

In the late 19th Century Western Union allowed telegraphic messages on its network to be sent to multiple destinations. Up until the Great Depression wealthy North American residents would be deluged with nebulous investment offers. This problem never fully emerged in Europe to the degree that it did in the Americas, because telegraphy was regulated by national post offices in the European region.

[edit] History of Internet "spam" (1978-Present)

The earliest documented spam was sent in 1978, by Gary Thuerk.

Although spamming has existed on the Internet since as early as 1978, the first major spamming incidents didn't take place until the early 1990s.

Spamming began becoming a major problem at the same time that the Internet began its exponential mainstream expansion in 1993 (also known as Eternal September).

[edit] Origin of the term "spam"

The term spam is widely believed to have derived from the SPAM sketch of the BBC television comedy series "Monty Python's Flying Circus". [citation needed]

The sketch features a small restaurant in which every item on the menu includes SPAM canned meat, and a chorus of Vikings drowning out all conversation with a song consisting almost entirely of the word "SPAM".

[edit] References

This article is part of the Spamming series.
E-mail spam DNSBL | Spamhaus | Stopping e-mail abuse | Spambot
Address munging | E-mail authentication | Directory Harvest Attack
Spamdexing
Google bomb | Keyword stuffing | Cloaking | Link farm | Web ring
Referer spam | Blog spam | Spam blogs | Sping | Scraper site
Telemarketing Autodialer | Mobile phone spam | VoIP spam
Scams Phishing | Advance fee fraud | Lottery scam | Make money fast | Pump and dump
Misc. Messaging spam | Newsgroup spam | Flyposting
History of spamming