级别： 初级 J.S. Kelly (jskelly@jskelly.com), Freelance author
2002 年 9 月 01 日 Do you think spam was only just invented? No, it's been bothering people for years, and you can read all about it here.
"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.
参考资料
- 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!
关于作者  | | |
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
jskelly@jskelly.com.
|
对本文的评价
| 
