Keith Lynch's timeline of spam related terms and concepts
This is http://keithlynch.net/spamline.html
Here is Keith Lynch's timeline of spam-related events, terms,
concepts, people, and sites, according to DejaNews and my own
archives. There is more about e-mail spam than usenet spam, since I'm
more interested in battling the former. Plenty isn't on here simply
because it would be a hassle to search for it, e.g. when various
spam-related lawsuits were started or won. Gradual transitions are
also of course not shown, even though they're more important than
anything that is shown. For instance the fact that there are
finally no major sites which allow spamming, which knowingly host
spamvertised web pages, or which tell complainers to register on the
spammer's remove list. No honest and rational person still advocates
remove lists. Please e-mail me (kfl@keithlynch.net) any suggestions or
comments. No spam please.
Year Term
Month
82 2 Earliest known email chain letter (quickly stamped out)
85 8 Another email chain letter (quickly stamped out)
91 2 Craig Shergold wants cards
91 2 Craig Shergold doesn't want cards
93 6 The $5 -> $50,000 chain letter on news, some titled MAKE.MONEY.FAST
93 9 The $5 -> $50,000 chain letter on news mentioning Dave Rhodes
94 3 "MMF" (any chain letter, after classic subject line "MAKE.MONEY.FAST")
94 3 unsolicited commercial email (now called email spam)
94 4 The "green card lawyers" (Canter & Siegel) newsgroup spam
94 4 "spam" (meaning mass sending of netnews)
94 11 CancelMoose
94 12 "spam" (meaning mass sending of mail to legitimate mailing lists)
94 12 The "good times" email virus hoax
95 1 "Krazy" Kevin Lipsitz (notorious newsgroup spammer)
95 3 "velveeta" (crossposting an article to too many newsgroups)
95 4 "Briedbart Index" to decide which newsgroup posts are spam
95 4 Jeff Slaton (notorious spammer, "the Spam King")
95 5 Floodgate (spamware)
95 5 news.admin.net-abuse newsgroup
95 6 "spamvertise" (to advertise via spam)
95 6 "spamware" (spamming software)
95 6 UDP (Usenet Death Penalty -- all newsgroup postings from site are nuked)
95 7 "spam" (meaning mass sending of mail to all addresses one can scrounge)
95 7 NoCeM
95 8 Sanford Wallace (uber-spammer -- cyberpromo, savetrees, ispam,
answerme, spamford, etc)
95 8 List of 2 million email addresses offered for sale
95 10 abuse@ addresses
95 11 "remove list" (the first (?) of many that were intended to be universal)
95 11 "LART"
95 11 Cyber Promotions, aka CyberPromo (notorious spam outfit)
96 1 "rogue domain"
96 1 Freedom Knights ("anti-censorship" pro-spam group)
96 3 Spamblocks (e.g. REMOVE.TO.REPLY) added to addesses to foil spammers
96 3 Yuri Rutman (notorious spammer)
96 4 "UCE" (meaning Unsolicited Commercial email)
96 4 Lightning Bolt (spamware)
96 4 X-No-Archive: header lines
96 5 Walt Rines (notorious spammer -- Quantcom, IEMMC, etc)
96 6 IDP (Internet Death Penalty -- all packets from site are nuked)
96 6 Whack-a-Mole (spammers who quickly lose accounts but keep reappearing
at different sites)
96 7 "spamhaus" (a spamming site)
96 7 news.admin.net-abuse.email newsgroup
96 7 List of 7 million email addresses offered for sale
96 7 Hipcrime (source of newsgroup floods)
96 8 "UBE" (meaning Unsolicited Bulk email)
96 9 "Spamford" (nickname for uber-spammer Sanford Wallace)
96 9 "munging" (another term for spamblocking)
96 10 "spamblock"
96 10 Ready-Aim-Fire (spamware)
96 10 List of 11 million email addresses offered for sale
96 11 "Four Reports" chain letter mentioning Christopher Erickson
96 11 "Teergrube" (a relay which discards everything) proposed
96 12 Dave Mustachi (notorious spammer -- Floodgate spamware)
96 12 Earthstar (rogue domain)
96 12 Nancynet (rogue domain)
96 12 E-mail Blaster (spamware)
97 1 Quantcom (rogue domain)
97 1 Extractor Pro (spamware)
97 3 "open relay"
97 3 Dan Huffnal (notorious spammer)
97 3 Stealth (spamware)
97 4 IEMMC (email spammers' organization, claimed to have "universal"
remove list)
97 5 CAUCE (an organization that favors a law banning UCE but not UBE)
97 5 Smith bill (would ban UCE but not UBE)
97 6 Spam hearings at the FTC
97 6 "SMTP hijacking" (first use was apparently in a message from *me*)
97 6 "relay rape"
97 6 List of 31 million email addresses offered for sale
97 6 abuse-email@ and abuse-news@ addresses
97 7 AGIS becomes a major spam source
97 7 "Picklejar" (nickname for spammer Walt Rines)
97 7 mallet (weapon metaphorically used against spammers)
97 7 BulkMate (spamware)
97 7 List of 57 million email addresses offered for sale
97 8 "relay hijacking"
97 8 Goldrush (spamware)
97 9 "Four Reports" chain letter mentioning Karen Liddell
97 9 E-mail Platinum (spamware)
97 10 AGIS (last major spam-friendly site) kicks off CyberPromo, Quantcom,
Nancynet, and other spammers. IEMMC dead. Whack-a-Mole epoch begins.
97 10 Joe Melle (notorious spammer -- NOIC, TSF-industries, etc)
97 10 RBL (Realtime Blackhole List) of spam sites, run by Paul Vixie
97 10 Golden Mallet award
97 12 List of 80 million email addresses offered for sale
98 1 "E-Rage" (what spammers claim spam opponents suffer from)
98 1 "Lumber Cartel" (what spammers claim spam opponents are being
paid by)
98 2 Rapidfire (spamware)
98 3 Express Mail Server (spamware)
98 3 remove-list.com (yet another "universal" remove list,
was finally disconnected in September 1998, but was still
touted in spams until August 1999. It has since been recycled
into an unrelated porn site.)
98 4 ISOC (Internet Society) meeting on spam
98 4 Netcom (last major holdout) finally agrees to stop hosting
spamvertised web sites
98 5 UUNET becomes a major spam source
98 6 "Murking" (spamming while citing the proposed Murkowski
spam law as "proof" that this spam is ok).
98 7 HyperOrbit (spamware)
98 7 List of 91 million email addresses offered for sale
98 8 "404 compliant" said of a spammer's web page which has been
deleted, analogous to murkers claiming to be "301 compliant"
98 10 Alan Ralsky, another major spammer
98 10 SAFEeps, yet another universal remove list. Sigh.
98 11 Dotless numeric web sites (e.g. http://3448157907/xx12),
to make tracing harder.
99 2 POPSITE.NET becomes a major spam source
99 7 Taiwan (.tw) becomes a major spam source
99 11 DMA announces a new global remove list (e-mps.org). Idiots.
00 1 POPSITE.NET ceases being a major spam source
00 5 Nigerian scam spam
00 6 Argentina (.ar) becomes a major spam source
00 11 Taiwan (.tw) becomes the spam capital of the world
01 4 Received: lines consisting entirely of dots
01 5 UUNET finally ceases being a major spam source
01 5 POPSITE.NET resumes being a major spam source
01 5 formail.pl exploit ("Below is the result of your feedback form.")
01 8 List of 209 million email addresses offered for sale
01 8 SPEWS.ORG blacklist
Also see the "official" news.admin.net-abuse jargon file:
http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/ip/freenet/subs/complaints/spam/jargon.txt
and my net timeline http://keithlynch.net/timeline.html
which is similar to this page but without the focus on spam.
Last updated November 23rd, 2002