Spam turns 20 and is still going strong

We recently passed an Internet milestone: April 12 marked the 20-year anniversary of commercialized spam. But even with two decades and trillions of unsolicited messages behind us, it seems there is still no end in sight.

Cloudmark wrote a blog post and created an infographic looking back at key dates in the 20-year history of spam. That first blast on Usenet News was nothing. Internet service providers, businesses, and individuals have invested millions and wasted countless hours in the battle against spam.

According to Kaspersky Lab, spam still makes up nearly 70 percent of all email sent. That means, roughly speaking, that if you were to receive 100 emails today, there’s a good chance that 70 of them will be unwanted solicitations.

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The good news is that things actually have improved dramatically on the email side. While 70 percent of all email might be spam, webmail services and email servers have greatly improved the ability to identify and block those messages before they get in the door. Most email client software also has very good junkmail filtering capabilities. The result is that only a handful of the spam messages intended for you ever actually make it to your inbox.  [via PCWorld]