Coins DIG

30 years have passed since the first spam message was sent and 15 years since for the first time it was coined. Today spam continues infecting e-mail. Joel Furr the one who came up with the term. He works as an administrator on the Usenet, which is a net discussion system. Spam served as the term that referred to spontaneous bulk messages.

Spamhaus, which is an anti-spam body, states that about 90 percent of all e-mail represents spam. According to Mark Sunner, who holds the position of a chief analyst at Message Labs, an online security firm, spam represents a real life arms race.

There are billions of spam messages sent each day; some of them block mail servers, slow down the networks as well as bringing viruses into people's computers. Spam helps hackers break into the system of a computer. In such a way spam creates an unpleasant experience for those surfing through the Internet.

"Spam means there is an increasing risk to e-mail; it cannot become a reliable vehicle for getting messages across. When e-mail was designed the internet was largely used by people you could trust," outlined Richard Cox, chief information officer of anti-spam body Spamhaus.

"Unfortunately not only did bad people start to use the internet, the gates to the internet were transferred from fairly prudent technologists to people who wanted to make money out of it. That's when spam caught on and ever since it has been a rear-guard action," he added.

It is worth mentioning that the term spam was created after the Monty Python sketch, which for the first time was shown in 1970. In the sketch a restaurant only provides the processed meat product. The sketch shows a group of Vikings who begin singing: "Spam, lovely spam, wonderful spam."

The research performed by Brad Templeton, chairman of the board at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the term was then used in different chat rooms, having various meanings until one day it became a popular term for describing unsolicited bulk e-mail.

The first spam was sent by a marketing representative at Dec. The event took place on May 3, 1978. He was able to sent unsolicited e-mail to every West Coast computer on the Arpanet.

Spamhouse Project reports that about 200 spammers around the world are responsible for sending about 80 percent of all spam.