30 Years Of Spam E-Mails

In 1978, An Enterprising Computer User Sent The Very First Unsolicited Ad. Thanks A Lot, Guy!

(CBS)  By Sunday Morning host Charles Osgood.

---

Let the record show that yesterday marked the 30th anniversary of SPAM.

No, not Spam the luncheon meat that Monty Python went on about, though it was that chorus of "Spam Spam Spam Spam" that's thought to be the genesis of the term to describe the flood of unasked-for e-mails we find in our "in" boxes.

On May 3, 1978, an employee of the old Digital Equipment Company mass-mailed an ad for a new computer to fellow users on a forerunner of today's Internet.

Many recipients OBJECTED.

Little did they know what was coming …

By one estimate, spam now accounts for 90 percent of all e-mail … as many as 120 BILLION spam messages per day.

[younmm23]

117 words. Congratulations, you wrote a longer article than a second grader could.

Gee, I wish I was on the CBS News payroll. I could write crappy stories too.

[tool105]

***? where''s the rest of the story?

[rcaden]

The article here isn''t the text, it''s Charles Osgood''s video commentary.