Father of Spam Speaks Out on His Legacy

With that one fateful move, email spam was born.

Gary Thuerk, now in sales at computer giant Hewlett-Packard Co., sent out that original spam back when the Internet was called Arpanet, and researchers and the military were the only ones using it. As a marketing manager at the East Coast-based Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), Thuerk sent out the bulk email inviting West Coast techies to a demonstration of Dec's new Decsystem-20.

When those early email users checked their inboxes, they discovered this foreign-looking message with a cc list that took up so much room it spilled into the message's body. They simply had never seen a mass email before.

Some seemed happy to receive this nifty notification. Some people cursed Thuerk when their computers crashed. And the Defense Communication Agency scolded Thuerk, prohibited him from doing it again.

Despite the scolding, Thuerk says it was a great idea.

He saw these mass emails as a cheap, effective way to get a message to a whole lot of people. He's proud that he sent the first spam, comparing his move with the Wright brothers' virgin airplane flight.

In the 26 years since then, spam has spiraled into a daunting digital phenomenon. Analysts estimate that 2.5 billion pieces of spam are circulated every day, accounting for nine out of 10 American emails. Spammers wreak havoc on Internet providers and corporate mail servers everyday, forcing companies to hire technicians to do nothing but deal with the deluge of spam.

Industry analyst firm Ferris Research estimates that in 2003, we wasted 15 hours deleting email, compared to 2.2 hours in 2000. And MessageLabs Inc., a managed email security firm based in New York, says spam now makes up more than 80 percent of all email being sent around the world.

The government even got in on the battle this past year, passing the CAN-Spam Act. In a legislative attempt to combat what is largely seen as a digital plague, the act applies civil and criminal penalties to offenders.

In a one-on-one interview with Datamation, Thuerk says he doesn't feel any regret for starting spam. People don't throw cocktail weenies at him when he walks into a party. Instead, he says they ask for his autograph. Thuerk also talks about how successful that first spam was, how he feels about being known as the Father of Spam, and, if he had the chance, would he do it all over again.

Q: Who actually came up with the idea to mass email these people?
I did. I looked at sending out invitations and calling all of those people, but it was too hard to reach them by phone and too expensive and slow to print out invitations and send them. My project manager, Carl Gartley, actually typed in all of the email addresses on and off for a couple of days.

Q: What kind of reaction did you get?
It was a mixed reaction. Some people I saw were glad to have the information... Other people said they didn't want the email and that it ate up all of the free space on their computer. It used up all the disk space on a professor's computer at the University of Utah.

Q: Was it effective?
It was very effective. We had a presentation in L.A. and in Silicon Valley and a lot of people came to see the demonstration. It resulted in $10 million to $12 million in sales over the next several years.

Q: Were you encouraged by the results?
I was very encouraged, but the DCA [Defense Communications Agency] said I wasn't allowed to do it again, and that they would take measures if I did. Some people called and complained to my manager, Fred Wielham.

Q: What was the DCA's reasoning behind telling you not to do it again?
They said Arpanet was considered a research vehicle, not to be used for commercial uses. If someone had wanted to set up Amazon.com in those days, they wouldn't have been allowed. Everything changed when it became public.

Q: Did you continue to send spam after that warning?
I sent out more information to a few more people, but only one person at a time. They were responses to inquiries, mostly. We didn't do any more mass mailing. The mass mail was sent to people we didn't know. We sent individual emails to the people we did know.

Q: What did you call these mass emails back then?
It wasn't called spam. It was just unsolicited email.

Q: How do you know for sure that you sent the first spam?
Arpanet in its early development was mostly for research, not productivity. Everything that went on back in those days was all kept online, and there is readily available information that proves it.

Q: How do you feel about your title, The Father of Spam?
It's been a lot of fun. I say to people, ''Don't make me mad. I'm one of the original spammers!'' People always introduce me as the Father of Spam. I never bring it up, but other people do.

Continue on to find out how people react to Thuerk when they find out who he is, and whether or not he would do it all over again.