Spam marks double figures
Published: 13 Apr 2004 10:35 BST
From anger to resignation
Attitudes about spam, too, appear to have changed under the constant onslaught. While nearly everyone would seem to agree the Internet would be better off without it, spam has now become so pervasive that some people now seem to take it as a matter of course, treating it as an ineradicable, if unwelcome, feature of the landscape.
It was not always that way, though. People who have used email long enough remember their first spam -- and their anger -- vividly.
"I was furious and disgusted," recalled California state Senator Debra Bowen, who started using email in 1989 and sponsored her first anti-spam bill in 1998. "It felt like a real violation."
Bowen recalled that, 10 years ago, the Internet was still considered an essentially noncommercial zone, populated mostly by academics and with relatively few choices in services. "All you can eat," unlimited-access plans common today were not widely available, and connection speeds were slow as molasses by comparison with current standards, making bandwidth precious.
"Spam was not just annoying; it was expensive," Bowen said.
Now, people with unlimited Internet access and broadband connections complain that they could use all their online time in just dispensing spam, most of which isn't pretty.
The advertising vehicle that proved so effective for Canter & Siegel's legal services is equally effective for hawking pornography, sexual aids, pyramid schemes, stock tips, credit repair -- with unlikely return addresses pointing to the likes of Prince Peter Kabila, Clattering J. Spectroscopy, Sebastian Goins, Mrs. Floxy Page, and abcss016@1588.adsldns.org.
And that's just from yesterday's batch.
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