Spam celebrates its 30th anniversary
Has it really been 30 years?
“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,” says New Scientist. “It was the first spam email ever.”
Since that day there has been a long, protracted spam war. Every time we find a new way to fight spam, the spammers develop a new method to get past our filters.
I’ve noticed, however, that one main tactic for a spammer is to disguise the spam email with a bunch of gibberish. Doesn’t this, then, cut down on the efficiency of the spam? If the spammer can’t adequately relay to you what it’s trying to sell, then even when it does get past the filter it wouldn’t make a very good pitch.
I use Gmail, which has a pretty good spam filter. But even for the few spam emails that get through, I can’t remember the last time I actually opened one. What a computer algorithm can’t figure out, the human brain easily can. The only trouble is the time it takes to delete it.
