Usenet

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, published a website in August 1991. Berners-Lee was the first to combine Internet communication (which had been carrying email and the Usenet for decades) with hypertext (which had also been around … Read More

Visualization of the various routes through a portion of the Internet In the general sense, an internet (with a lowercase “i”, a shortened form of the original inter-network) is a computer network that connects several networks. As a proper noun, … Read More

The term spam is derived from the Monty Python SPAM sketch, set in a cafe where everything on the menu includes SPAM luncheon meat. As the server recites the SPAM-filled menu, presently a chorus of Viking patrons drowns out all … Read More

Newsgroup spam predates e-mail spam, and targets Usenet newsgroups. Old Usenet convention defines spamming as excessive multiple posting, that is, the repeated posting of a message (or substantially similar messages). Since posting to newsgroups is nearly as easy as sending … Read More

The first recorded use of the term spyware occurred on October 17, 1994 in a Usenet post that poked fun at Microsoft’s business model. Spyware later came to refer to espionage equipment such as tiny cameras. However, in early 2000 … Read More