DEC invented spam 30 years ago
Now it's the mobile phone's turn to suffer
WOULD YOU believe that spam invented 30 years ago this Saturday (3rd May) by DEC, aka HP?
The general consensus of opinion is that somebody at the Digital Equipment Company – which was subsequently famously acquired by Compaq then HP – sent out the first spam - an advert for its latest range of mini computers.
The spam read: "DIGITAL WILL BE GIVING A PRODUCT PRESENTATION OF THE NEWEST MEMBERS OF THE DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY; THE DECSYSTEM-2020, 2020T, 2060, AND 2060T. "
The full text has been blogged here.
Whoever was the culprit, he or she wasn't too adept at using the 'Sndmsg' email facility as not all the intended 393 targets received the spam since their email addresses overflowed into the body of the text.
That didn't stop an uproar. Many angry recipients deemed it an illegal use of Arpanet which, as well all know, was the forerunner of today's internet.
Mobile phone security specialist – Adaptive Mobile – has marked the occasion by suggesting spammers are moving to mobile phones.
A YouGov report estimated that in the UK an astonishing two thirds of mobile users have already been victims of mobile spam or phishing attacks.
In China it is worse. Adaptive Mobile's CEO, Lorcan Burke, says that, "the average [Chinese] mobile user receives six to ten spam messages per day."
Globally over 80 per cent of mobile phone users have received at least one spam on their phone, according to the ITU. µ
See Also
Adaptive
to beat city trader cheasts
Comments
In all my years with a mobile phone
I've received exactly ONE spam text message. Not too shabby considering how bad it sounds in other places like China.DECSystem-20 Continued
The 2020/2040/2060/2065 hardly fit the name Mini-computer. A VAX 730/750/780 might. The DEC-10/DEC-20 were large time sharing mainframes, as in 2 or 3 - 6 foot cabinets. If you don't have 36 bits, you are not playing with a full DEC. %DECSYSTEM-20 Continued...Those were the days!
I remember working on DECSYSTEM 10's and 20's in DEC Storage engineering when I was an FE 27 years ago. Then I was the first FE in Colorado trained on the 11780 to get it up and running for the storage engineers to get the first RH780's for the RP series drives up and running. As well DW780 that supported the UDA50 which was for the RA storage drives. Those were heady days for DEC. Man I miss those days. Back in the days when FE's still used oscilloscopes and replaced chips.DEC Mini-computer
The Dec System-20 computers were mini-computers. They were computers, about the size of a Mini - ergo, the name stands.Another DEC First!!
DEC was always ahead of its time on technology. Never thought it was when it came to marketing though.Not a Minicomputer!
DEC's products included so-called "minicomputers" --- PDP-5, PDP-8, and PDP-11, and so-called "large computers," -- PDP-6, PDP-10, DECsystem10 (PDP-10 renamed), and DECsystem20 (PDP-10 with a newer OS). The 10's and 20's represented a small part of DEC's revenues, and were sold by the "Large Computer Group" (LCG). Members of LCG cringed whenever anyone referred to their products as "minicomputers." VAX emerged out of the minicomputer side of the house, and eventually subsumed the earlier PDP-11 and LCG product lines.