Spam reaches 30 year anniversary
Earlier this month spam reached its 30
th birthday - no cake or candles for this anniversary given the way it has since exploded into most people's inboxes. A marketing manager for the old computer company DEC has the dubious honour of being the first person to send a ‘recognisable' spam to 400 recipients on 3 May 1978. Gary Thuerk was the man responsible for drafting the email, which was sent to advertise new additions to DEC's family of System-20 minicomputers. Apparently the receivers were no more happy to receive it than we are today, and there were many complaints (read more
here).
Our Ask The Expert feature last month featured the very topical question of how to rid your inbox of spam - you can read more on what our expert had to say here.
Investing in a package like Windows Live OneCare will help you protect and maintain your computer with antivirus, firewall, antispyware, anti-phishing, PC performance tune-ups, and file backup and restore functionality. The FBI's research says that 75% of net scams snare people through junk email, and in 2007 these cons netted criminals more than £121m - so it's got to be worth considering.
