maandag 31 maart 2008

Spam blights e-mail 15 years on


Spam continues to blight e-mail exactly 15 years after the term was first coined and almost 30 years since the first spam message was sent.
The term is thought to have been coined by Joel Furr, an administrator on the net discussion system Usenet, to refer to unsolicited bulk messages.

Billions of spam e-mails are sent each day, blocking mail servers, slowing down networks, infecting people's computers with viruses, helping hijack machines and generally making the internet a painful experience for many.

The term spam was inspired by the Monty Python sketch, first shown in 1970, in which a restaurant only serves the processed meat product.
In the sketch, a group of Vikings start singing: "Spam, lovely spam, wonderful spam."
The term was picked up in internet chat rooms in the early 1970s and used in a variety of contexts until it became best-known as a reference to unsolicited bulk e-mail.

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