Spam hits 30

Hyperconnectivity is a megatrend whereby everything and everyone that can benefit from being connected will be connected.

The down side is that things that don’t deliver business benefit can also be connected.

And today marks the thirtieth anniversary of spam- it first appeared on the ARPAnet on May 3 1978, as an over exuberant entrepreneur tried to promote his products by sending out an unsolicited bulk emailing.

The term ‘spam’ appeared some 15 years later (15 years ago) and has been highly disruptive to residential and business users alike.

According to Spamhaus, 90% of email today is spam with a mere 200 spammers accounting for 80% of this number!

Wouldn’t we all love to take away the privileges of hyperconnectivity from these 200? Unfortunately spam is one cost of openness that hyperconnectivity implies.

The implication for the industry is that there will be a continued requirement for intelligent network and application layer technologies within a layered defense architecture, to counter spam and its relatives (e.g. IM spams sometimes called SPIT).