Would You Like Spam With That

Posted Tuesday 1st April 2008 by admin in SEO.

It is thought that ‘spam’ was a word first coined during the war to describe some anaemic looking reconstituted meat product that contained approximately 1.4% meat. This product could then be deep fried, put in sandwiches, roasted or served with custard and passed for anything your mother said it was.

Unfortunately, this is not the only ‘spam’ in existence today. It has been almost 30 years since this term was first applied to unsolicited junk emails and is something all net users constantly strive to block.

Spamhaus, the anti-spam body (not the left -over meat scraping factory) say that 90% of e-mails are still spam. They also claim only 200 spammers are responsible for 80% of these unsolicited emails world-wide. This contributes vastly to the frustrating slowness of networks, blocking servers, spreading viruses and hijacking machines.

The problem originated with bulk postings on discussion groups and still means that many are unusable because of this. But most of us will find it is a complete pain in the neck when we are getting spam in our inbox.

The first bulk email was sent out by a marketing firm in 1978 and the idea has caught on by those who wish to make money through this underhanded process. The same people who have no regard for the fact that they are putting people off using the most innovative communication method ever known to mankind.

The people responsible for this spamming are very clever at what they do. They hack into home computers and turn them into botnets which then send out the messages for them. In the past, they would be de-activated by taking down the central server controlling the machines but hackers have found a way round this that allows them to shift the location of servers every three minutes.

There is a distinct lack of government action on this problem which is why internet service providers such as BT, Wannadoo and Tiscali are doing virtually nothing to tackle the problem. It is accepted that this is going to be an on-going problem with hackers just as clever as those trying to fix the problem but Rome wasn’t built in a day and if we’re ever going to get on top of it, action needs to be taken at a higher level. If not, we are in danger of losing the most efficient interaction system we have.

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