The history of spam was recently detailed in this New Yorker article. Much of it is old news for anyone who’s been online and paying attention for a while, but Michael Specter’s journey from Arpanet to CAN-SPAM to botnets makes for a good read, especially when it’s peppered with stats like this one:

“It takes at least five seconds to recognize and delete an email. If a billion spam messages elude detection every day—which means that ninety-nine per cent do not—that adds up to a hundred and fifty-nine years of collective time lost hitting the delete button every day.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 26th, 2007 at 6:00 am and is filed under Internet Stuff.