Electronic spam – Things that are surprisingly older in the internet world

Being 150 years old, still, it is troubling everyone.

| Published: Tuesday, May 16, 2017, 16:54 [IST]

Electronic spam? It is not something new to deal with. Already our emails are bombarded with junk messages from unknown sources.

Electronic spam – Things that are surprisingly older in the internet

The companies make use of email and other electronic messaging services to advertise their products to a large number of audience in an easy way. But, those repeated messages which are irrelevant most of the time have turned out as the biggest problem for the receivers. Thanks for the automatic filters present in the services like email, which auto filters all the junk emails.

Different types of spam

Other than emails, there are various other spams used by the company to market their businesses which include instant messaging spam, Web search engine spam, wiki spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, spam in blogs, mobile SMS spam, online classified ads spam, Internet forum spam, television advertising spam, mobile app spams like Whatsapp, and many more.

How old is it?

Like everything else, even an electronic spam come with a long history. Some sources do say that it is 150 years old. Prior to the emergence of desktops and mobiles, people used to send spam messages in the form of paper where most of them are left unread.

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If you have ever wondered the reason behind naming this junk messages as spam, it is nothing but a luncheon meat which is included in every dish.

First spam sent out

If you look back, the history dates back to 1864. A large number of telegrams were sent out to many people in London by dental surgery to inform about their new services.

Later the same trend was followed by every other business in and around. The earliest spam which has been documented was a message sent out in 1978 by Gary Thuerk to 393 people which advertised about the Digital Equipment Corporation computers.

Larger commercial spams

The first large-scale spam was out in January 1994. It was distributed across USENET to every newsgroup with a message, "Global Alert for All: Jesus is Coming Soon".

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Later in the same year, this technique was used for the commercial purpose by two lawyers Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel who posted a message to every possible newsgroup which read as, "Green Card Lottery - Final One?". This list keeps growing as we dig deeper in search of history.

Reason behind spamming

Being economically viable medium to share the information, people opt this to advertise their products and features. This cheapest mode of data transfer has been followed by almost everyone to showcase their channel.