Unhappy Birthday, Spam

By Greg McNevin

May 5, 2008: The last week marked the 30th birthday of one of the world’s most loathed creatures: spam, and if recent revelations that bots have cracked Hotmail and Gmail’s CAPTCHA systems is anything to go by, it’s likely to live to a ripe old age.

Creature because despite significant action around the world, the beast still runs rampant to this day, and is getting more potent and prolific by the day.

The ominous date was set way back in May 1978 when a marketer working on behalf of the US DEC computer company sent a promotional message to 400 people via the now ancient-seeming Arpnet, drawing much ire from the recipients.

That was one small step for what has become known as spam, which has taken giant leaps in the 30 years since to become a billions-a-day operation preying on the confusion, insecurity and gullibility of email users.

Promising everything from performance pills to untold riches, spam has changed a lot over the years, however, as time wears on it is becoming increasingly difficult to stop, and increasingly dangerous to end users and companies with inadequate security.

While the arms race between spammers and security firms is continuing, as always the best defence outside of a strong security perimeter is healthy dose of wariness towards unsolicited mail.

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