30 year old spam

Although it seems hard to believe, spam is older than many of the people reading this blog entry. On May 3rd, according to New Scientist, will be 30 years old. It was then that one Gary Thuerk, in his role as a marketing man at the old Digital Equipment Corporation outfit, in his wisdom thought it would be a good thing to use this new fangled email and equally new fangled Arpanet network system to send an advertising message to all its users. Of course, back in May 1978, all its users equated to just 393 poor souls. Even in this small amount the spam was not best received and a number of complaints were received by Thuerk, as well as DEC getting a wrist slapping from the Arpanet admin.