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1978
The first mass marketing e-mail is sent out on the military/academic predecessor to the Internet. It advertised a Digital Equipment Corp. product demonstration. The sender was strictly chastised by officials within the Defense Department.
1993
The word "spam" is first applied to junk e-mail after the same message is accidentally posted more than 200 times to an online discussion group. The term comes from a Monty Python skit involving Spam, the lunch meat, in which the actors repeat the word over and over. It comes to symbolize something recurring and bothersome.
1994
A year after the Internet was privatized, a husband- and-wife lawyer team sends a message advertising immigration services to 6,000 online discussion groups, angering thousands. The couple later wrote a book subtitled "Everyone's Guerrilla Guide to Marketing on the Internet." The husband was disbarred in 1997 partly for his "egregious" e-mail campaign.
2000
The Nigerian money- transfer scam, around in varying forms since the late 1980s, appears as a spam offering to pay people if they help secretly move riches out of Nigeria.
2001
Spam makes up about 10 percent of e-mail. It will grow to eight times that amount in the next three years.
2002
Maryland's Commercial Electronic Mail Act goes into effect, allowing individuals to sue spammers for sending fraudulent messages.
2004
In January, the federal CAN-SPAM Act is enacted, regulating how commercial e-mail may be sent and making it a crime to stray from the rules. The first criminal charges under the law are filed against four Michigan defendants.
The first mass marketing e-mail is sent out on the military/academic predecessor to the Internet. It advertised a Digital Equipment Corp. product demonstration. The sender was strictly chastised by officials within the Defense Department.
1993
The word "spam" is first applied to junk e-mail after the same message is accidentally posted more than 200 times to an online discussion group. The term comes from a Monty Python skit involving Spam, the lunch meat, in which the actors repeat the word over and over. It comes to symbolize something recurring and bothersome.
1994
A year after the Internet was privatized, a husband- and-wife lawyer team sends a message advertising immigration services to 6,000 online discussion groups, angering thousands. The couple later wrote a book subtitled "Everyone's Guerrilla Guide to Marketing on the Internet." The husband was disbarred in 1997 partly for his "egregious" e-mail campaign.
2000
The Nigerian money- transfer scam, around in varying forms since the late 1980s, appears as a spam offering to pay people if they help secretly move riches out of Nigeria.
2001
Spam makes up about 10 percent of e-mail. It will grow to eight times that amount in the next three years.
2002
Maryland's Commercial Electronic Mail Act goes into effect, allowing individuals to sue spammers for sending fraudulent messages.
2004
In January, the federal CAN-SPAM Act is enacted, regulating how commercial e-mail may be sent and making it a crime to stray from the rules. The first criminal charges under the law are filed against four Michigan defendants.
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