Net Results:The term "spam" has come to be so closely identified with junk e-mail (formally known as UCE, or unsolicited commercial e-mail) that perhaps we are approaching, or have already surpassed, the point at which more people think of unwanted Viagra advertisements than the meat product from Hormel writes, Karlin Lillington
How many even make the connection to the much-loved Monty Python spam song, with its chorus of "spam, spam, spam, spam . . ." presumed to have been the inspiration for the e-mail term? Given the onslaught on the inbox these days, where the vast majority of daily mail for many is spam, it's hard to remember that, a decade ago, just a few of the pesky things in a week would make your blood boil.
If you've been using the internet long enough - pre-world wide web - you may even think back to those dreamy days of command line interfaces when spam was exceedingly rare.
But, boy, how things have changed. I've been reading Spam Kings, Brian McWilliams's fascinating 2004 history of those (at best) annoying and, more often, criminally abhorrent people who shovel this stuff out to the rest of us. In his description of the first really big waves of spam in the late 1990s, he almost creates a nostalgia for some of those early spam messages. Advertising books and CDs for get-rich-quick schemes, pheromone spray to help lonely geek guys attract women and herbal weight loss pills, most spams came primarily from a few spam kings.
Some of the ads he reprints definitely ring the bells of memory. You almost can imagine spam trading cards: "Oh yeah, I got that one in 1998!"
The large-scale spammers themselves are strange and often severely dysfunctional, such as the fetishist pretending to be a woman, who for years spammed net discussion groups seeking homemade videos of men being tickled. Yes, tickled. Anyone who expressed annoyance at "her" tactics or who, having sent such videos, decided not to send any more, would be bombarded with threats and thousands of spams.
There's the infamous Sanford "Spamford" Wallace, the self-proclaimed spam king who infuriated the net's loose network of spam-fighting "anti-spammers" with defiant taunts - then eventually gave up spamming to declare himself an anti-spammer.
And there's the central character of McWilliams's investigative tale, a neo-Nazi with a Jewish background who changed his name to Davis Wolfgang Hawke and had made millions by his early 20s selling pills, books, CDs, guides to spamming; anything and everything via spam.
Just as infuriating is the saga of how so many internet service providers, while on one hand decrying spam as an annoyance for their customers and a serious source of plaque inside the net's arteries, surreptitiously signed secret contracts to let the spammers use their networks, turning an unofficial blind eye to their activities.
For those of us who have always routinely clicked "delete" on every single marketing spam, penny stock "pump and dump" e-mail, phishing or scam attempt, it's truly shocking to read how many millions are generated for a rogue's gallery of spam kings by idiots who actually reply and buy those enlargement pills for $19.99.
The book - surprisingly compelling and fast-paced - is a must-read for anyone trying to understand why we still suffer endless spam attacks and curious about the mindset not just of the spammers but of the white knight anti-spammers (typified by a mild-mannered woman known as "Shiksaa") who make it their obsession to unearth and expose them.
Since the book's publication, spamming has taken a far darker turn. These days, along with the individuals using automated programmes to spray millions of spams on to the net at a time, there are individuals and organised criminal gangs renting out "zombie" or "bot" networks for relaying spam, formed by your PC and mine.
The FBI this past week warned that over a million home computers are used in this way, unbeknownst to their owners, who will usually never realise that at some point their PC was quietly infected with a virus or trojan which enables hackers to operate their PC remotely.
It almost makes you yearn for the simpler days of the old pills and porn spams.
On a more entertaining note, if you wish to see the world's very first spam, sent out by an over-enthusiastic Digital Equipment Corporation salesman for a computer demo in 1978, it is archived at www.templetons.com/brad/spamreact.html. The spam itself is a curious relic, but far more interesting is the response from those who were spammed. Among the replies is one from the now famed programmer and free software advocate Richard M. Stallman.
Predictably now, he was enjoyably unpredictable then: "I didn't receive the DEC message, but I can't imagine I would have been bothered if I have. I get tons of uninteresting mail, and system announcements about babies born, etc. At least a demo might have been interesting."
