30 years ago Gary Thuerk, a marketer at the now-defunct computer firm Digital Equipment Corporation, sent an email to 393 users of Arpanet, the US government-run computer network that eventually became the internet. It was the first spam email ever. The first reactions were negative and the recipients complained to Thuerk who had not hidden his identity. Three decades later Spam has become a much much bigger problem it has grown to 120 billion messages a day and a multi-billion dollar industry. The almighty Bill Gates promised in 2004 that the world would be free from spam in 2006 but failed miserably. Not only does spam cost productivity but also jams the networks. Ferris Research a San Francisco based company predicts that the cost of fighting spam in 2008 will be over $140 billion globally.

The first wave of spammers saw their email inboxes flooded with angry responses, and were often kicked off of their accounts by their ISPs. Canter and Seigel's book also prompted the development of the first software that aimed to detect and delete spam messages.

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