spam (noun)
Oct 6, 2026 · 10 min · 8 segments
Please enjoy this encore of Word Notes. Unsolicited, unwanted, and sometimes malicious electronic messages indiscriminately transmitted to a large number of people. CyberWire Glossary link…
Oct 6, 2026 · 10 min · 8 segments
Please enjoy this encore of Word Notes. Unsolicited, unwanted, and sometimes malicious electronic messages indiscriminately transmitted to a large number of people. CyberWire Glossary link…
Definition: unsolicited, unwanted, and sometimes malicious electronic messages indiscriminately transmitted to a large number of people.
According to Brad Templeton in his excellent blog about early internet history, among other things, back in nineteen seventy-eight, an aggressive DEC marketer named Gary Thuerk launched the first internet unsolicited bulk email campaign to roughly four hundred ARPANET prospects, and the idea of spam was born, although we hadn't named it yet.
Complaints to Thuerk's boss came in immediately, though, and he never did it again.
Still, he received thirteen million dollars in sales from this one, air quotes here, "mistake." The term spam, according to the Eater website, originated in nineteen thirty-seven referring to a brand of canned meat, a six-ingredient food product where the apocryphal myth claims that the term is an acronym for scientifically processed animal matter.
It's unclear exactly when the internet community started referring to unsolicited junk messages as spam, but it likely started back in the nineteen eighties with the MUDder community.
In the early days, they were usually text-based, but essentially real-time multi-person environments, shared worlds where users can chat, move around, and interact with locations and objects.
According to one player back in nineteen ninety, Andrew Plotkin, digital spam refers to a Monty Python skit where Vikings sing Spam at a lady who floats down from the ceiling in a restaurant where they serve Spam with everything.
Yes, the skit is as absurd as it sounds, and for Monty Python fans, it's hilarious.
Today, some marketers use digital spam, not the scientifically processed animal matter, to advertise their products, but these messages can also be malicious.
According to Proofpoint, the receipt, processing, classification, and disposal of spam and unwanted mail consume system and employee bandwidth, creating a service quality issue.
For those interested in MUDs, the cybersecurity canon novel The Blue Nowhere by Jeffrey Deaver is a cyber thriller set in the time of the nineteen nineties internet bubble, where the good guy and the bad guy hackers use a very specific MUD to track each other down.
The skit that Plotkin referred to is from a popular BBC TV show called Monty Python's Flying Circus that aired from nineteen sixty-nine to nineteen seventy-four, and Not for Nothing, Plotkin signs his forum post with this statement: "A man who doesn't know his Monty Python is not a man worth talking to." Well said, sir.
Definition: unsolicited, unwanted, and sometimes malicious electronic messages indiscriminately transmitted to a large number of people.
According to Brad Templeton in his excellent blog about early internet history, among other things, back in nineteen seventy-eight, an aggressive DEC marketer named Gary Thuerk launched the first internet unsolicited bulk email campaign to roughly four hundred ARPANET prospects, and the idea of spam was born, although we hadn't named it yet.
Complaints to Thuerk's boss came in immediately, though, and he never did it again.
Still, he received thirteen million dollars in sales from this one, air quotes here, "mistake." The term spam, according to the Eater website, originated in nineteen thirty-seven referring to a brand of canned meat, a six-ingredient food product where the apocryphal myth claims that the term is an acronym for scientifically processed animal matter.
It's unclear exactly when the internet community started referring to unsolicited junk messages as spam, but it likely started back in the nineteen eighties with the MUDder community.
In the early days, they were usually text-based, but essentially real-time multi-person environments, shared worlds where users can chat, move around, and interact with locations and objects.
According to one player back in nineteen ninety, Andrew Plotkin, digital spam refers to a Monty Python skit where Vikings sing Spam at a lady who floats down from the ceiling in a restaurant where they serve Spam with everything.
Yes, the skit is as absurd as it sounds, and for Monty Python fans, it's hilarious.
Today, some marketers use digital spam, not the scientifically processed animal matter, to advertise their products, but these messages can also be malicious.
According to Proofpoint, the receipt, processing, classification, and disposal of spam and unwanted mail consume system and employee bandwidth, creating a service quality issue.
For those interested in MUDs, the cybersecurity canon novel The Blue Nowhere by Jeffrey Deaver is a cyber thriller set in the time of the nineteen nineties internet bubble, where the good guy and the bad guy hackers use a very specific MUD to track each other down.
The skit that Plotkin referred to is from a popular BBC TV show called Monty Python's Flying Circus that aired from nineteen sixty-nine to nineteen seventy-four, and Not for Nothing, Plotkin signs his forum post with this statement: "A man who doesn't know his Monty Python is not a man worth talking to." Well said, sir.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
