The Spam That Started It All
*Five years ago Tuesday, two lawyers posted an advertisement to Internet newsgroups. The notorious "Green Card Spam" marked the beginning of a flood of spam that has since made Usenet a very different place. Antispam activist Ray Everett-Church looks back.*In 1994, I was spending my days as an Information Specialist with the Washington-based American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA). My job was to root out news and information about the US government's immigration policies.
As the organization's resident amateur "geek," I had been assigned the task of modernizing AILA's methods of disseminating information to its attorney members by creating a sort of online immigration news wire.
Naturally, I came to be seen by the staff of AILA as the "go-to" guy for all things technological. That's why, when I arrived in the office on the morning of 13 April 1994, the receptionist handed me a stack of angry faxes and forwarded a voice mailbox full of furious calls.
All the messages were about the Internet, the Green Card Lottery, and a pair of Arizona lawyers. By the time I stumbled to my cubicle, I had met the enemy.
