For 30 years now, you've been getting spam

0 Comments | AFP, May, 2008

WASHINGTON (AFP) — This week, the world will mark an anniversary that has changed the face -- and other anatomical regions -- of email inboxes everywhere: the first known spam email was sent 30 years ago on Saturday.

But the message sent on May 3, 1978 by a marketer for the now defunct DEC computer company to around 400 people on the west coast of the United States wasn't called spam, and the sender dispatched it without ill intent.

How things have changed.

Spam got its name from a skit by the television show "Monty Python's Flying Circus," in which a group of Vikings in a restaurant that serves all of its food with Spam tinned meat sing a song repeating the word ad nauseum, says Brad Templeton, who has thoroughly researched the subject.

"Thus, the...