It was May, 1978. Lauren Weinstein was among those developing an early version of the Internet when an e-mail popped into his box. It was the first spam ever -- a pitch from Digital Equipment Corp. sent, literally, to everyone on . . .
It was May, 1978. Lauren Weinstein was among those developing an early version of the Internet when an e-mail popped into his box. It was the first spam ever -- a pitch from Digital Equipment Corp. sent, literally, to everyone on the fledgling Net. "People thought it was a little bit annoying but sort of amusing," Weinstein says.

It's not amusing anymore. Junk e-mail accounted for an estimated 49% of network traffic in June, according to Brightmail Inc., a San Francisco manufacturer of anti-spam software. These days, spam attacks Weinstein's computer every two seconds. And the Internet pioneer, founder of the Privacy Forum in Woodland Hills, Calif., is trying to save the revolutionary communications medium he had a hand in creating 25 years ago. The open architecture that made the Internet a transformative technology also has spawned the rapidly growing junk e-mail menace. "It never occurred to us that the tools we were developing for ourselves in this highly trusted environment would ever end up in the hands of the world's population," he says.

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