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A brief history of spam

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Our guide to junk e-mail's long and annoying past

J.S.
Kelly (mailto:[email-masked]?cc=&subject=A
brief history of spam)
Freelance author
01 Sep 2002

Do you think spam was only just invented?
No, it's been bothering people for years, and you can read all about it
here. This article is a companion story to the developerWorks article
"Stamp out spam
with SpamAssassin."

"I'll have his
spam -- I love it!" -- Monty Python spam skit

The birth of spam: April 12, 1994 does not live in Net.infamy, but
perhaps it should -- for that is the day that spam as we know it was born.
Read all about how the husband-and-wife team of Laurence Canter and
Martha Siegel unleashed the Pandora's Box of Spam on the Internet in
this period article from the New Scientist.

(Note that Brad Templeton cites an example of spam as
early as 1978 and provides strong contradictory evidence to and
arguments against the popular interpretation of the history of the origins
of spam. He also provides the actual text of that vintage
1978 spam message from DEC.)

Another 1990s period summary of the
Canter and Siegel case, this time from K.K.Campbell, gives more
background, including the etymologies of SPAM-the-luncheon meat as well as
SPAM-the-mail-problem -- it even provides a partial transcript of the
famous Monty Python episode from which the latter gets its name! This
early spam originally appeared in Toronto Computes
in October 1994, and was presumably immediately transcribed from paper to
plain text and cross-posted Net-wide by multiple individuals. This is the
way that print articles were most often posted in those days, usually
preceded by a disclaimer to the effect that the material was "Reprinted
without permission."

Canter and Siegel were not the only early spammers; they were soon
(around December 1994) joined by one Michael Wolff,
who spammed Usenet with ads for his book on Internet culture.

Even before the Wolff incident, admins were taking steps to fight the
onslaught of spam. As far as we know, the first one to automatically
cancel (Usenet) spam was the infamous Cancelmoose[tm],
whose true identity remains a closely guarded secret. The
Cancelmoose's[tm] weapon of choice was the mighty Cancelbot.

The Cancelmoose[tm] retired after being accused by a vocal minority of
censorship. (We say vocal minority because our understanding is that the
majority of users supported the moose -- but in this as in other details
of our story, we would like to be corrected where we are wrong -- so much
of the Internet has been rewritten that it is hard to research this
stuff.)

Others fax-bombed and
otherwise harassed Canter and Siegel and other early spammers; see the
types of missives
that were being exchanged -- including the urgent notice that "Canter
and Siegel... has announced plans to spam the net once again within
days..." and irrefutable proof that Canter and Siegel were planning to
spam the Internet with e-mail ads for oxygenated water...

Aside from cancellation, revenge, and hand-wringing, early spam-busting
efforts included postings in resources like net.abuse and the RISKS
Digest. Here is a historic RISKS post
from Tim Shepard informing readers, just ten days after the Canter and
Siegel "spam heard around the world," of the pair's then-current new
Internet accounts (in typical spammer fashion, the spamming duo opened new
accounts as fast as the Net diehards who were fighting them could get them
kicked off of old ones). Postings like this one could be viewed as
precursors to blacklists (or "remove lists" -- the first of which debuted
around November of 1994). The post just prior to this one in the RISKS
Digest is also interesting: it suggests drowning out Canter and Siegel's
spam with even more (spoofed)
spam. Which brings up an interesting point: if spam is fake ham, what is
fake spam?

Others came up with Procmail filters that they shared with the
community. Especially notable among these is Nancy McGough's 1994 Procmail
tutorial in the FILTERING MAIL FAQ. (We provide this link for
historical background; the technical information provided there is, today,
obsolete. Read Nancy's updated Procmail
tutorial.)

Still others philosophized ("Will business change
the Net or will the Net change business?") and otherwise discussed the
implications for the future of this new net abuse. Some -- like attorney Eric
Schlachter -- with surprising accuracy, others -- like the
Cancelmoose[tm] himself with an amazing lack of same.

Roger Clarke analyzed spam as aberrant online
behavior, and the gentle marketing folk of the time were horrified at
the Canter and Siegel incident. Read what the members of the Internet
Marketing discussion list were talking about in November 1994.

Of course, we know now how it all turned out. But where will it lead?
As for the future, we can be sure of one thing: eventually, the spammers
will evolve some technique that will foil even the mighty SpamAssassin's
capabilities.

Resources

Return to the article "Stamp out spam
with SpamAssassin" (developerWorks,
September 2002).

Read all about spam at spam.abuse.net
and at the fine links provided by stop-spam.org.

Edward Gehringer's Computer Abuse --
Spamming page at North Carolina State University is perhaps the best
we've come across.

Michael Fraase recently took the time to informally tally estimates
of the economic toll of
spam. Compare and contrast with Spam: A Look at
the numbers -- a 1996 version of such a guestimate.

It isn't being updated anymore, but Keith Lynch's A timeline of
spam has great details from the early days.

The Net Abuse
Jargon File by Andrew Nellis is also not being maintained, but is
interesting from a historical perspective.

The Cancelmoose
lives! And is still fighting spam. But is it the original
Cancelmoose[tm], or is it just "Cancelmoose Beyond"?

Retired IBMer Paul Graham has a personal interest in spam and spam
filters, and has been tracking
spam news (among other things) since his retirement from IBM in late
2001. All of his summaries are great; particularly notable are his links
to volunteer Net.History archivists who preserve spam for
future generations; and this announcement that a spam conference
is planned for January 2003.

Back issues of the RISKS Digest
make for fun reading and prove the axiom that there is nothing new under
the sun. (The last few issues in this April 93 - April 94 citation cover
the period during which C & S fired the first salvo of the modern
spam wars -- but you can move back and forth in time using the quaint,
1993-era "standardized" navigation icons at the top and bottom of the
page. The RISKS
Digest is still published today.

Back issues of the Computer
Underground Digest also make for good reading. The Computer
Underground Digest is no longer being published.

There used to be things called anonymous
remailers. Read the fascinating
story of the anonymous remailer, www.penet.fi of Finland.

Check out Hobbes' Internet
Timeline, which covers the growth of the Net from the creation of
ARPA itself in 1957 (as a direct result of the Soviets' launch of
Sputnik) -- to the coining of the term "Surfing the Internet" by Jean
Armour Polly in 1992 -- to 1997, where it (very unfortunately!) ends.
The Canter and Siegel debacle even rates a mention in this important
source work!

About the
author
J.S. Kelly is a freelance writer and editor living
in the Los Angeles area. J.S. has been writing professionally since
1992 and using Linux since 1994. You can contact J.S. at [email-masked].

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