Well, I'm pretty sure I've been seeing spam for a bit more than ten years, as has CAUCE (Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email) in its various incarnations. However, the blog by Neil Schwartzman that was put up yesterday at http://www.cauce.org/archives/155-This-Decade-in-Spam.html#extended covered only the notable events of the last decade. Which was indeed eventful enough.
In fact, it turns out that CAUCE, apart from the useful work it's done in all sorts of anti-spam initiatives, constitutes quite a handy historical resource. Though I must admit that it did confuse me to see Sean Connery described as a spamming politician. Somehow, I missed or forgot the Scottish actor's attempt to raise money for the Scottish National Party, as described at
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/06/24/1023864543413.html
Confused, stirred, but not shaken. The erstwhile James Bond is not the first person to have assumed that it isn't spam (or spam harvesting) if it's for something you consider to be a good cause. There was a time when I spent quite a lot of my working day persuading one of my employers that being a charitable organization doesn't mean you're not subject to the laws of the land or contractual obligations with service providers, when they were set on launching a somewhat similar initiative. (In that instance, the issue was more clear-cut, since in many contexts, a charity is subject to the same legal restrictions as a business. And yes, I appreciate that there are differences between a charity and a political party, even if some politicians don't!)
David Harley
Director of Malware Intelligence
