Spam Is 30 Years Old

holy_calamity writes "New Scientist commemorates spam's 30th anniversary, a week from today. The first spam message — archived here — was sent to 393 users of ARPANET on May 2, 1978 by someone from computing pioneers DEC. They had to type in all the addresses by hand first."

One Thing That's Changed

As you see below, the mail program would only accept 320 addresses. The rest overflowed into the body of the message. When they found some recipients had not gotten it, they re-sent the message to the rest of the recipients. According to Thuerk, they were unaware of the "address file" function in the mail program that would have enabled a mailing list.

Unfortunately, one thing that's changed is that spammers have become far more sophisticated and clever. Sometimes I analyze a piece of spam that gets caught and when it's at my office's Exchange Inbox, funny things happen. Like I show up as the sender, receiver and subject of the message! Only when I inspect the e-mail do I find that they are using some sort of Exchange exploit to make it appear this way while the actual subject is--you guessed it--viagra (and no, my name is not Viagra)!

In the spirit of the history of Spam, I think it also bears mentioning something I didn't see in the article: a Usenet phrase "Eternal September [wikipedia.org]" which was September of 1993. An exponential growth of spam and gullible users ensured constant income for spammers and provided the initial hit of income for people like The Spam King (I won't even dignify him with printing his name). They've been chasing the dragon ever since at the expense of the hardware and software of the internet. And to think that if the spammers had missed that initial exposure of thousands of people willing to "increase what she prefers your size XXL no one will know you use works 100%" then we might not be in the situation we are today.

Judges today should force spammers to work with law enforcement and security companies to figure out how to stop others before they even start. If not for an initial hit of funding, I doubt any spammer would continue.

Re:One Thing That's Changed

The "reply-to:" field is used by most email clients as the "Sender". You can fill out the reply-to with anything you want. No exploits needed.

Stallman ---

Heh, nice pro spam message by RMS there.

Re:

I prefer the bit where he tries to get himself subscribed into the first internet dating service. MMMMMM classy.

Re:Stallman ---

Heh, nice pro spam message by RMS there.

Of course the context was a little bit different in 1978 than it was more than a decade later when the Green Card Lawyers really kicked off the phenomenon.

Kind of the like a neighborhood where just about everybody knows everybody and thus everyone is accountable for any antisocial behaviour on their part.

Re:

4) Would a dating service for people on the net be "frowned upon" by DCA? I hope not. But even if it is, don't let that stop you from notifying me via net mail if you start one.

Does this mean that we have RMS to thank for match.com and the like?

Stallman Wants a Date!

Damn AC, you beat me to it. That comment alone made the whole thing worth reading. I was reading along, not really paying attention to who was who, but I got to that line and thought, 'okay, who is THIS yutz?' So I scrolled back and lo-and-behold! It's Stallman.

Someone should make a Richard Lolman pic, "I'm in yer ARPAnet, begging for dates." Or "Online Dating: yer doin' it wrong." Or even "I can has girlfriend?"

Re:

Yes, but he still has the same issue with it that countless Usenet posters have had about spam for years: stop making me page through 10 pages of headers just to read your garbage.

It's interesting to note that he was in favor of advertising (dating sites especially!) so long as he didn't have to page through a bunch of headers to read the ad.

And in 30 years...

This is the first time I've purposely clicked a link to view spam.

Re:And in 30 years...

"on 2 may 78 digital equipment corporation (dec) sent out an arpanet message advertising their new computer systems. this was a flagrant violation of the use of arpanet as the network is to be used for official u.s. government business only. appropriate action is being taken to preclude its occurrence again."

whew, glad they took action, such mis-uses could have gotten out of hand.

Re:

Sounds like the plot for a decent little time travel story. Guy travels thirty years back, and writes an innocuous reply to an advertisement for a DEC server. "Hey, everybody, it suddenly occurs to me that there are absolutely NO mechanisms in SMTP to authenticate sender, recipient, blah blah blah. Sure, it's not a problem now, but hey, who knows where this ARPANET thing's going to go...."

Wasted chance

A 2020 WILL BE THERE FOR YOU TO VIEW

Apparently the original recipients(tm) had a chance to meet the very first spammer and have physical access to him and his product and wasted the chance.

Re:Wasted chance

Oh come on, the only people on the ARPAnet back in 1978 were the nerdiest of the nerds. What were they going to do, throw their pocket protectors at the guy?

For reference, the people complaining about the spam on that page are her [stanford.edu], him [panda.com], and also this guy [fsfeurope.org]

I'm sure the DEC guy was quaking in his boots.

Re:Wasted chance

... her, him, and also this guy

No wonder they are looking to set up an online dating service :-D

The more things change, the more they stay the sam

I love the fact that the message starts with a buffer overflow.

Fail!

"APPROPRIATE ACTION IS BEING TAKEN TO PRECLUDE ITS OCCURRENCE AGAIN."

So, uhm, they failed?

ok i won't write in caps but it's a quote damnit.
ok i won't write in caps but it's a quote damnit.
ok i won't write in caps but it's a quote damnit.
ok i won't write in caps but it's a quote damnit.
ok i won't write in caps but it's a quote damnit.

Re:Fail!

Some other choice quotes from the discussion prompted by that first spam:

THIS WAS A FLAGRANT VIOLATION OF THE USE OF ARPANET AS THE NETWORK IS TO BE USED FOR OFFICIAL U.S. GOVERNMENT BUSINESS ONLY. APPROPRIATE ACTION IS BEING TAKEN TO PRECLUDE ITS OCCURRENCE AGAIN.

Great! Now we'll never have to worry about this issue ever again.

There are many companies in the U.S. and abroad that would like to have access to the Arpanet. Naturally all of them cannot have this access.

Naturally... there are still areas of the Sahara without internet access, right? Right?

I shudder to think about it, but I can envision junk mail being sent to people who implement Dialnet, and no way it could be prevented or stopped. I guess the ultimate solution is the command in your mail reading subsystem which deletes an unwanted message.

Hey, it works for Strong Bad.

And now, for the win:

The amount of harm done by any of the cited "unfair" things the net has been used for is clearly very small. ... By the suggested reasoning, we should always follow the political views that we don't believe in, and especially those of terrorists, in anticipation of their attempts to impose them on us.

Good to see that spam had its defenders back in the day. Does bringing up terrorism count as a Godwin nowadays?

That was vaguely disappointing...

I half-expected to see a message more along the lines of, "Xp4nd y0ur R4m, d3creeese ur l4tency".

Happy birthday Spam!

Thanks for making people focus less on sending me physical junk mail. The development of a spam filter which automatically rubs it in feces and sends it back to the originator wasn't going so well. The robots were the hard part. Stupid robots.

It's a shame

that we can't get today's spammers to manually type in every address too. That might cut down on spam a bit.

Re:It's a shame

that we can't get today's spammers to manually type in every address too. That might cut down on spam a bit.

Combine that with cutting off the hands of spammers, and I think you'd be onto something. :-P

Cheers

usenet spam - greencard lawyers

It was sometime in the early 1990s when some lawyers posted a message to every usenet newsgroup advertising a greencard service. I dont think they did it by hand, but automated script.

Usenet hasnt fared too well lately. Soem Chinese guy piosts tens of thousands of messages a day trying to sell direct factory output. Changes the posting address in every messsage so normal filters have problems.

I think the younger crowd has long moved over to special interest groups on social netowrking sites.

Re:usenet spam - greencard lawyers

The script was written in perl, of course.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canter_&_Siegel [wikipedia.org]

The article has notes about their numerous ethical lapses also.

Re:usenet spam - greencard lawyers

Canter and Siegel [wikipedia.org]. I still remember firing up trn that morning, coming across the same off-topic message in group after group, and realizing that someone had used a newsgroups list in conjunction with a perl script or something to post the same advert to every USENET group in existence.

The mechanism was obvious as soon as you saw the results, but it seemed so obviously wrong and inappropriate "why would anyone *do* that!". The beginning of the end of the golden age ...

Mr. Watson, come here, I want to sell you a DEC

This is spam's "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you." It's so special, it brings a tear to my eye.

They forgot to include a remove link though. WTF?

Re:Mr. Watson, come here, I want to sell you a DEC

Though in the case of Spam, I'm surprised it wasn't "Mr. Watson, come here, did you kn0w that you can get h0m3 r3f!n@nCINg for less then 6% APR, no questions asked?"

Or, "Mr. Watson, come here, do you want a G1@nt C0ck like me, if so, buy this pill."

Or, "Mr. Watson, come here, you great uncle from Nigeria just died and you stand to inherit a fortune!"

RMS: If we outlaw spam the terrorists have won!

RMS truly is a visionary.

Re:RMS: If we outlaw spam the terrorists have won!

3) It has just been suggested that we impose someone's standards on us because otherwise he MIGHT do so. Well, if you feel that those standards are right and necessary, go right ahead and support them. But if you disagree with them, as I do, why hand your opponents the victory on a silver platter? By the suggested reasoning, we should always follow the political views that we don't believe in, and especially those of terrorists, in anticipation of their attempts to impose them on us. If those who think that the job offers are bad are going to try to prevent them, then those of us who think they are unrepugnant should uphold our views. Besides, I doubt that anyone can successfully force a site from outside to impose censorship, if the people there don't fundamentally agree with the desirability of it.

This was written in 1978.

For some reason, I really can't get that to settle in, and as much as I hate to call RMS a "visionary", that comment might as well have been written last week...

The fact that RMS and his supporters "won" this side of the debate may very well have played a significant role in shaping the events of the past 15 years.

Look who's 70

For those wondering, the original spam (nee Hormel spiced ham) turned 70 last year.

Re:

For those wondering, the original spam (nee Hormel spiced ham) turned 70 last year.

That explains the taste ...

I love this bit...

ON 2 MAY 78 DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORPORATION (DEC) SENT OUT AN ARPANET MESSAGE ADVERTISING THEIR NEW COMPUTER SYSTEMS. THIS WAS A FLAGRANT VIOLATION OF THE USE OF ARPANET AS THE NETWORK IS TO BE USED FOR OFFICIAL U.S. GOVERNMENT BUSINESS ONLY. APPROPRIATE ACTION IS BEING TAKEN TO PRECLUDE ITS OCCURRENCE AGAIN.

IN ENFORCEMENT OF THIS POLICY DCA IS DEPENDENT ON THE ARPANET SPONSORS, AND HOST AND TIP LIAISONS. IT IS IMPERATIVE YOU INFORM YOUR USERS AND CONTRACTORS WHO ARE PROVIDED ARPANET ACCESS THE MEANING OF THIS POLICY.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.

MAJOR RAYMOND CZAHOR

CHIEF, ARPANET MANAGEMENT BRANCH, DCA

Did Major Czahor have a 6-bit terminal, or was he just indulging in the traditional military fondness for capital letters? But what's really funny is that he doesn't care about the spamming as such, he just wants to remind everybody that the network was for "U.S. Government Business Only". Which is laughable, since unofficial use of ARPANET was rampant, especially in 1978. That's how Zork [wikipedia.org] got developed, with its authors writing it in pieces and using feedback from the ARPANET community to improve the game. There was also an excellent database of limericks; a friend with ARPANET access was good enough to print it out for me, but I've long since lost it. Anybody seen it online? For that matter, is there a PDP-10 emulator somewhere running the original Zork? Not the Fortran port (which never had the complete game) the original MDL version.

Re:

Actually, by 1978 6-bit terminals were pretty rare, at least in the computer labs I frequented. There were no longer any significant 6-bit networks, so the only reason to have a six-bit terminal was if your terminal was a electromechanical teleprinter, because mechanisms that could print the entire 7-bit ASCII character set were more expensive than those that couldn't. And by 1978, electronic terminals were beginning to replace teleprinters. This was the period in which Bill Joy used an ADM3a [franken.de] to write vi [wikipedia.org]

Re:

Well, no, I haven't. But you made me curious, so I went and looked it up. VMS, like many OSs from that period, assumed that the user might not have access to lower case, and ignored case in things like the command line and file names. But that's also true of DOS/Windows command line and file systems.

As recently as SunOS 4.2, if capslock was on during login, getty and login assumed no access to lower case. The resulting session would be case-insensitive, and presented in uppercase. ISTR though, that real uppercase was indicated by a preceding backslash.

Poor poor lonely RMS...

It looks like RMS was looking for love back then too!

10-MAY-78 23:20:30-PDT,2250;000000000001
Mail-from: MIT-AI rcvd at 7-MAY-78 2316-PDT
Date: 8 MAY 1978 0213-EDT
From: RMS at MIT-AI (Richard M. Stallman)
Subject: MSGGROUP# 697 Some Thoughts about advertising
To: stefferud at USC-ISI
Redistributed-To: [ISI]<MsgGroup>Mailing.List;154:
Redistributed-By: STEFFERUD (connected to MSGGROUP)
Redistributed-Date: 8 MAY 1978

---EDIT--

4) Would a dating service for people on the net be "frowned upon" by DCA? I hope not. But even if it is, don't let that stop you from notifying me via net mail if you start one.

Re:

It looks like RMS was looking for love back then too!

well... http://www.stallman.org/extra/personal.html [stallman.org]

SPAM!

Well... I tried to make a joke here, repeating the word SPAM a lot, but I got cought by slashdot's SPAM filter:

Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition.

But I didn't dive up! Thus, I have figured out a way to beat the system, here it goes:

while echo "SPAM!"; do echo "SPAM!"; done

So for much for a SPAM filter, slashdot!

Named after a Python script

Man: You sit here, dear.
Wife: All right.
Man: Morning!
Waitress: Morning!
Man: Well, what've you got?
Waitress: Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam; spam bacon sausage and spam; spam egg spam spam bacon and spam; spam sausage spam spam bacon spam tomato and spam;
Vikings: Spam spam spam spam...
Waitress: ...spam spam spam egg and spam; spam spam spam spam spam spam baked beans spam spam spam...
Vikings: Spam! Lovely spam! Lovely spam!
Waitress: ...or Lobster Thermidor a Crevette with a mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and with a fried egg on top and spam.
Wife: Have you got anything without spam?
Waitress: Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Wife: I don't want ANY spam!
Man: Why can't she have egg bacon spam and sausage?
Wife: THAT'S got spam in it!
Man: Hasn't got as much spam in it as spam egg sausage and spam, has it?
Vikings: Spam spam spam spam... (Crescendo through next few lines...)
Wife: Could you do the egg bacon spam and sausage without the spam then?
Waitress: Urgghh!
Wife: What do you mean 'Urgghh'? I don't like spam!
Vikings: Lovely spam! Wonderful spam!
Waitress: Shut up!
Vikings: Lovely spam! Wonderful spam!
Waitress: Shut up! (Vikings stop) Bloody Vikings! You can't have egg bacon spam and sausage without the spam.
Wife: I don't like spam!
Man: Sshh, dear, don't cause a fuss. I'll have your spam. I love it. I'm having spam spam spam spam spam spam spam beaked beans spam spam spam and spam!
Vikings: Spam spam spam spam. Lovely spam! Wonderful spam!
Waitress: Shut up!! Baked beans are off.
Man: Well could I have her spam instead of the baked beans then?
Waitress: You mean spam spam spam spam spam spam... (but it is too late and the Vikings drown her words)
Vikings: (Singing elaborately...) Spam spam spam spam. Lovely spam! Wonderful spam! Spam spa-a-a-a-a-am spam spa-a-a-a-a-am spam. Lovely spam! Lovely spam! Lovely spam! Lovely spam! Lovely spam! Spam spam spam spam!

Oh I forgot

Speaking of spam, there are all kinds of spam. There's what some humorless dweebs call comment spam [slashdot.org], and then of course I must try to sell you some of this stuff [wikipedia.org].

Then of course there's Spam [uncyclopedia.org], SPAM [uncyclopedia.org], and S.P.A.M. [uncyclopedia.org].

CLICK HERE FOR FREE!! pr0n

Nov 23, 1987 - 1st documented use

Nov 23, 1987 - 1st documented use of the word "spam" to describe unwanted electronic correspondence.

See http://tinyurl.com/4jg5w4 [tinyurl.com] (the url is a tinyurl that links to a google groups posting)

And yes, I'm the one who said that back then, and no, I didn't think I was doing anything big, it just seemed, well, obvious at the time.

Paul Czarnecki Cezanne

Re:

notice the lack of documentation to the claims. I didn't do the research on this, someone I didn't know. I had a friend point out the posting to me.

Popular thought is that the MUDers were using the term in 1985, but alas, google hasn't archived all those MUD logs.

Hence my careful use of the word "documented"

Maybe I should edit the wikipedia page!

And yes, I've been in correspondence with Brad Templeton, he also disputes my claim. But, I do have the google archive to back me up. If only I had been oblique in

Re:

arghhh.... lets try this again. http://groups.google.com/group/news.admin.net-abuse.email/msg/b7ce97a77276e16f [google.com] I've not put it in an URL since that doesn't seem to work.

Re:

I agree; and I tracked down the original for you to click on.

http://groups.google.com/group/news.admin/msg/483c12f48d13225e?output=gpl [google.com]

Slashdot should block *.tinyurl.com and that yahoo scripts place, as well as prevent AC's from posting live links.

Not much has changed

30 years later one crap message to a list can still generate dozens of messages bitching about the extra traffic and waste of resources.

Al Gore?

How come Al Gore isn't on this list? Interesting...

Re:

Coincidentally, it's also the 30th anniversary of that joke. :P

A conversation with my children

Q: Daddy, how old are you?

A: Older than spam, kiddo.

Q: ooooooooh

Spam Is 30 Years Old

I believe the meat product sold in cans often is, too.

spam, not Spam

TFA is about the first unsolicited commercial email. That became the definition of email that came to be called "spam" well after the first reference to the Monty Python sketch, which was brought up to describe massively multiple posts of advertising to usenet. It says at http://www.templetons.com/brad/spamterm.html [templetons.com] that Joel Furr was first to call it spam, but I seem to remember someone else stating that it reminded them of "a Monty Python sketch -- spam, spam, spam, spam."

BTW, the Hormel people never had a problem with the use of the term. In part because it was free PR, but also because they were gracious good humored about it. They went as far as to offer their own selected graphic of a spam can that could be used as a link to their pages. The idea as floated to them was to have their permission to produce a 2-link bar that said "This is Spam" [Hormel link] "and this is spam" [link to page with definition of problematic usenet and email traffic]. I can confidently state their being gracious and good natured because I was the one that suggested the links idea to them, requested the graphic of their choice, and talked with them about their reactions to use of the term. In this respect, the second of the "Cultural References" at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_(Monty_Python) [wikipedia.org] is incorrect, though the History section of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_(electronic) [wikipedia.org] gets it right.

They later reacted a little differently when people insisted on using the capitalized name in their own software and anti-spam sites (such as Spam Arrest) and couldn't see their way clear to use the more generic, lower case term. People criticized them for doing so without bothering to consider that they were forced by trademark law to protect their mark (the capitalized word) no matter how much they disliked doing so, lest they lose trademark status. Sadly, few seem to remember that Hormel asked nicely at first that the lower case be used unless referring to their product. The assertion by Spam Arrest that "No company can claim trademark rights on a generic term" is wrong: a term when trademarked before it comes into common use (trademark status being awarded 40 years prior to this "common use") remains a trademark as long as the owner acts to (at least attempt to) prevent its use as a generic term. Such action kept "xerox" and "kleenex" from becoming an accepted generic terms for photocopying and facial tissue, while failure to do so allowed "aspirin" and "heroin" to become generic terms despite starting as brand names, both originally owned by Bayer AG. As a German company it was unable to protect the marks against generic use in the US, particularly during WW II. Although Hormel lost the court cases that resulted, they acted with a "reasonable attempt" to protect the ownership of the mark, and so didn't lose it.

BTW, TFA is not a novel article. CNET published one on its 25th anniversary in 2003. In that respect, TFA is repeated public posting of commercial (or at least commercially supported) information. TFA fits the original definition of spam. In any case, New Scientist loses points for copying the idea for the article.

Re:

.. when spam was fought against by military.

At least Jimmy Carter didn't have the audacity to make a speech about the war on spam while standing in front of a "Mission Accomplished" banner after this bold email was sent.

Re:

I wonder what one of those babies goes for nowadays. It might be a neat addition to my collection...

...wait, a 30-year-old spam just WORKED on me. Fucksocks!