Back to Basic: What is SPAM??

I talked to someone yesterday and i realized that many people doesn't know the origin of SPAM and just know SPAM as an irritating mass sending of emails.. well i guess i can do a little introduction of SPAM here.

SPAM is an Hormel developed America's first canned ham (''Hormel Flavor-Sealed Ham'') in 1926, and eleven years later .. ok ok, I am kidding. The type of SPAM we are referring to is not the canned food as mentioned above. Let get serious.. SPAM as you people already known is a form of electronic mail send in mass volume containing irrelevant or inappropriate messages to a large number of newsgroups or users. What you may not know is that the first SPAM was probably sent by a marketing guy name "THUERK" from DEC System in 1978 with the subject "ADRIAN@SRI-KL" and the first response to the SPAM might be from "MAJOR RAYMOND CZAHOR,CHIEF of ARPANET MANAGEMENT BRANCH, DCA" ( Source : http://www.templetons.com/brad/spamreact.html)

SPAM counting back from the date of it's birth is about 30 years old. Bill Gate once mentioned at the World Economic Forum ‘2004' that SPAM would be dead by year 2006. But one in the year of 2009. We can obviously see that not only SPAM is very much alive, it is getting stronger and more vicious. SPAM is taking up 80-90% of the world email traffic and causes companies to loses billions of dollars yearly.

SPAM started off as pure text has now evolved into SPAM containing images, scripts, virus, etc... It started off as 10% of the world email traffic and has now become 80-90%. It is causing companies more network bandwidth, more human resources to handle the SPAM and more cost in getting rid of the SPAM.

More n more countries has implemented LAW in order to control SPAM. In 12 April 2007, Singapore implemented it's Spam Control Act. This mean that there is a legal framework before Mobile marketers and e-mail marketers send out their next unsolicited marketing message, or spam. Any violation of the framework would result in potential financial penalties of between $25 for each electronic message sent, or up to $1 million.

With the penalty in place, marketeers out there, do know the legal framework before you hit the 'send' button next time.