www.templetons.com/brad/spamreact.html
Reaction to the DEC Spam of 1978 Reaction to the DEC Spam of 1978 Possibly the first spam ever was a message from a DEC marketing rep to every Arpanet address on the west coast, or at least the attempt at that. After it you will find a snippet from some of the reaction it generated , not unlike the reaction to spam today. Some explanation by Einar Stefferud, who provided these files and was one of those who were there at the time: It was sent from SNDMSG which had limited space for To and CC and Subject fields. The poor soul that typed in the announcement, also in those days had to type in all the addresses, and this person was not trained in the use of SNDMSG.
Partly for being in all upper case, but also because the headers of 1978 are considered invalid today! The sender is identified as Gary Thuerk, an aggressive DEC marketer who thought Arpanet users would find it cool that DEC had integrated Arpanet protocol support directly into the new DEC-20 and TOPS-20 OS. DEC was mostly an east coast company, and he had lots of contacts on the east coast to push the new Dec-20 to customers there. But with less presence on the west coast, he wanted to hold some open houses and reach all the people there. In those days, there was a printed directory of all people on the Arpanet. Gary spoke to his technical associate, and arranged to have all the addresses in the directory on the west coast typed in, and then added some customer contacts in other locations, including people at ARPA headquarters who did not, according to Thuerk, complain. The engineer, Carl Gartley, was an early employee at DEC who had been called in to help with promoting the new Decsystem-20. They worked on the message for a few days, going through a few rewrites. Finally, on May 3, Gartley logged on to Garys account to send the mail. As you see below, the mail program would only accept 320 addresses. When they found some recipients had not gotten it, they re-sent the message to the rest of the recipients. According to Thuerk, they were unaware of the address file function in the mail program that would have enabled a mailing list. Thuerk thought, and maintains to this day that he didnt think he was doing anything wrong - even though he gets a moderate amount of spam on his current E-mail account. He felt the Dec-20 was really relevant news to the Arpanet community, the first major system with Arpanet software built into it. Indeed, some of those who commented on the message felt it was definitely more of interest than other small mass mailings they had seen, with baby announcements and personal trivia. He primed his boss to be ready for complaint, though he didnt anticipate how strong it would be. The Defense Communications Agency DCA which ran the Arpanet, called Thuerks boss, a former Air Force officer to register a strong complaint. One user from the University of Utah complained the spam had shut down his computer system. Thuerk says only 3 copies were sent to that system, so it was simply an unlucky coincidence that his mailbox disks were very near full when the message arrived. In those days of 56kb links, the thousands of copies of this message were not an insignificant load, however. Some who didnt get the message felt left out, oddly enough, since it became such a topic of conversation. Thuerk continues his career selling systems today, but his spam career was very short lived. In many ways, the negative reaction to that spam probably made sure the problem did not arise again for many years.
THE DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY OF COMPUTERS HAS EVOLVED FROM THE TENEX OPERATING SYSTEM AND THE DECSYSTEM-10 <PDP-10> COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE. BOTH THE DECSYSTEM-2060T AND 2020T OFFER FULL ARPANET SUPPORT UNDER THE TOPS-20 OPERATING SYSTEM. THE DECSYSTEM-2060 IS AN UPWARD EXTENSION OF THE CURRENT DECSYSTEM 2040 AND 2050 FAMILY. THE DECSYSTEM-2020 IS A NEW LOW END MEMBER OF THE DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY AND FULLY SOFTWARE COMPATIBLE WITH ALL OF THE OTHER DECSYSTEM-20 MODELS. WE INVITE YOU TO COME SEE THE 2020 AND HEAR ABOUT THE DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY AT THE TWO PRODUCT PRESENTATIONS WE WILL BE GIVING IN CALIFORNIA THIS MONTH. THE LOCATIONS WILL BE: TUESDAY, MAY 9, 1978 - 2 PM HYATT HOUSE NEAR THE LA AIRPORT LOS ANGELES, CA THURSDAY, MAY 11, 1978 - 2 PM DUNFEYS ROYAL COACH SAN MATEO, CA 4 MILES SOUTH OF SF AIRPORT AT BAYSHORE, RT 101 AND RT 92 A 2020 WILL BE THERE FOR YOU TO VIEW. ALSO TERMINALS ON-LINE TO OTHER DECSYSTEM-20 SYSTEMS THROUGH THE ARPANET. IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO ATTEND, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO CONTACT THE NEAREST DEC OFFICE FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE EXCITING DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY.
CAN YOU FORWARD THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE TO ALL ADDRESSES OF THE SUSPECT MESSAGE PLUS ALL HOST AND TIP LIAISONS? THANKS: NOTE: Please direct your comments, if any, directly to DCACODE535ISI. ON 2 MAY 78 DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORPORATION DEC SENT OUT AN ARPANET MESSAGE ADVERTISING THEIR NEW COMPUTER SYSTEMS. THIS WAS A FLAGRANT VIOLATION OF THE USE OF ARPANET AS THE NETWORK IS TO BE USED FOR OFFICIAL United States GOVERNMENT BUSINESS ONLY. APPROPRIATE ACTION IS BEING TAKEN TO PRECLUDE ITS OCCURRENCE AGAIN. IN ENFORCEMENT OF THIS POLICY DCA IS DEPENDENT ON THE ARPANET SPONSORS, AND HOST AND TIP LIAISONS. IT IS IMPERATIVE YOU INFORM YOUR USERS AND CONTRACTORS WHO ARE PROVIDED ARPANET ACCESS THE MEANING OF THIS POLICY.
There are two kinds of message that have been frowned upon on the network. These are advertising of particular products and advertising for or by job applicants. I would like to point out that there are good reasons other than taking up valuable resources and the fact that some recipients object for not permitting these kinds of messages. There are many companies in the United States and abroad that would like to have access to the Arpanet. Consequently if the ones that do have access can advertise their products to a very select market and the others cannot, this is really an unfair advantage. Likewise, if job applicants can be selected amongst some of the best trained around, or if the applicants themselves can advertise to a very select group of prospective employers, this is an unfair advantage to other prospective employees or employers who are not on the net. I have heard some rumblings about control and censorship of the net by the powers-that-be, but I feel in these two particular areas they are leaning over backwards to be fair to the big guys and the small guys alike. In addition, the official message sent out asked us us being network users to address the issue ourselves. I personally think this is reasonable and think we should lend our support or otherwise be saddled with controls that will be a nuisance to everyone involved.
From the address list, it seems clear to me that the people it was sent to were the Californians listed in the last ARPAnet directory. I would not mind hearing from DEC about their new products via ARPAnet mail, but I would expect considerably more technical content and considerably less of a sales pitch. Where is the line to be drawn between this sort of thing if it is to be allowed at all and advertising? Another point Jake mentioned which concerns me is that of employment hunting by employee or employer. Is that to be taken to mean that a person cannot establish contacts at another ARPAnet site and poke around about a possible position there? Allow me to point out that at times a job is created in order to have a particular person on the staff, and if that person is unavailable, the job wont exist. This all seems worthy of examination by the MsgGroup community, as it involves how electronic mail is to be used. I would greatly appreciate it if all comments about this make a distinction between ARPAnet mail and mail on another possibly commercial network. Saying that electronic junk mail is a no-no on the ARPAnet doesnt answer the question. I shudder to think about it, but I can envision junk mail being sent to people who implement Dialnet, and no way it could be prevented or stopped. I guess the ultimate solution is the command in your mail reading subsystem which deletes an unwanted message.
Well, if you feel that those standards are right and necessary, go right ahead ...
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