Happy birthday, now drop dead

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Posted in Internet on May 1, 2008 at 12:33 pm

All one hundred of you, known spammers that is, because on May 3, Spam will be 30 years old. Let’s hope they won’t get to their 60th.

The very first piece of junk mail, here was sent by DEC to every Arpanet address on the west coast of the USA. Carl Gartley the DEC engineer who has the dubious distinction of being the first ever Spammer, doesn’t think he did anything wrong. He even used his boss, Gary Thuerk’s, account to send the message. The response they got was interesting especially as the message was sent twice due to the limitations of email software in 1978.

Reaction was divided into those appalled by the intrusion and then, because of the discussion the message created, those who didn’t get a copy and felt left out. Thuerk realised there would be some negative response and had warned his boss to be ready for the flak. Neither anticipated exactly how much, including a strongly worded complaint from the US Defence Communication Agency which ran Arpanet.

World’s Worst
The list here at Spamhaus gives details and even photographs of the majority of the world’s worst Spammers. It is noticeable they are predominantly based in North America where the US 2003 CAN-SPAM act carries a 5-year prison sentence and requires all unsolicited email to carry an opt-out from receiving further messages. In effect it is a weak law, deliberately rushed through Congress before a much tougher anti-Spam law was passed in California, although there have been a small number of convictions due to lawsuits filed by ISPs.

The American Direct Marketing Association is responsible for watering down CAN-SPAM by weakening it in various ways including lengthening the time before honouring opt-outs (from 10 business days to 31 calendar days) and dropping the requirement that the message’s subject line indicate it is an advertisement. CAUSE (Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email) tried in vain to bring some sense to the legislators, pointing out CAN-SPAM didn’t even tell marketeers to stop Spamming unless they had the recipient’s permission and instead allowed them to send out Spam until specifically requested not to.

In Canada, the home of some of the worst Spammers, a Task Force has been developing recommendations to curb Spam since 2004 but currently there is no legislation that specifically controls the sending of Spam. The world’s 10 worst spammers are dominated by Russians.

Hail the Conquering Hero
Steve Linford, the Mac-using British founder of Spamhaus has been lauded around the world where it is estimated that 800 million email users benefit from his efforts to curb Spam.

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Comments

And here I thought you were wishing me a lethal happy birthday. I read an interesting article and have seen television reports on Steve Linford in the past. His job can’t be easy, and I’ve heard he’s received numerous death threats.

With his help spamming won’t get any easier for the criminals who perpetrate it. I use the word “criminals” with precision, as it has been estimated that over 80% of spam mail originates from organized crime syndicates, peddling anything from fake medicines to touting near-worthless penny stocks hoping to cash in on an uninformed day-trader buying frency. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

As for me, I use a Hotmail SPAM dump and rarely if ever give out my home and business email addresses, and consequently haven’t received any unsolicited junk mail in over a year. I suppose my email address has finally been weaned out of the system and off the circulating lists of spammers. Good thing too.

Comment by Jacques Daviault - May 2, 2008 @ 2:47 pm

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