The Original Spam

A recent Scientific American articles claims the first spam e-mail was sent much longer ago than you might guess.

They claim it dates back to 1978. The Digital Equipment Corporation sent about 400 emails to various users of the Arpanet pitching their new DEC System 20 computer. The Arpanet was a predecessor of the internet setup by the department of defense.

I'd have to imagine the end-users targeted by this spam weren't nearly as frustrated as many are today. I remember getting my first spam back in the mid-nineties. It seemed novel getting advertising via email - and didn't really bug me. The notion of needing a spam mail stopper to control the problem never crossed my mind.

By the late-nineties I was getting about 15 pieces a day. That was enough to be annoying. By 2001 I was getting close to 100 spam messages daily. Enough to drive me mad. I needed something to kill spam dead.

I investigated several commercial solutions for filtering spam. I actually purchased one of the major products of the day - SpamKiller. It definitely helped - but ultimately didn't work as well as I thought they should.

Early filters used pretty simple text-search filtering systems. At some point in early 2002, I figured I could write something better using a technology called fuzzy logic. That project eventually became the SpamButcher anti-spam mail system.

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