If you’re into celebrations, you might be interested to know that yesterday was spam’s tenth birthday. Ten years ago a message was posted to Usenet and Usenet was never really the same again. I do remember a time when Usenet was rendered, almost, useless thanks to the spam but I am now finding some newsgroups useful – and much easier to manage than hundreds of emails.

The question right now revolves around the future of email. Will email go the way of Usenet? I suspect not. It’s too fixed in our social and working lives to be abolished. At one time, I thought Instant Messenger looked like it might become the de facto online communication method – but, with hindsight, I think that was wrong.

I am pleased to note that a number of my anti-spam measures have started to kick-in. Demon’s filtering seems to be pretty effective (100s of spam down to 10s). I note Phil Gyford is pleased with his Knowspam.net – I am not sure I want to go that far yet because I don’t think it would be widely accepted (although he is proving that theory wrong).

So, in a bizarre way, Happy Birthday Spam – you’re ten. It’s the next ten years – the teenage years – which are going to be your most difficult.

On this day…

• 2005: Kinsey