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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   6996 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026

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I don't fully buy this. Telecoms were originally bult completely unsecured until phreakers ruined it. And even up until 2024 or so people could put whatever number they wanted on the caller id. Email was largely the same, totally unsecured, until the spam waves forced the mass lockdown.

There was the presumption of safety on the internet when it was a place only accessible to elites and nerds. And maybe now that's over, especially with the shitholes of the world getting hooked up. Indian cubercriminals act with absolute impunity, and nobody does a thing about it.

I'm not sure if we can ever get the trust back, but drone striking a few fraud factories would be a great start

On the other hand, the first ever spam campaign happened in the 70's on ARPANET

Was that e-mail spam in roughly the modern sense? The word "spam" was originally used to describe off-topic posts repeatedly posted to Usenet, and only later became a term for unsolicited bulk e-mail. (In both cases, the junk was mostly but not entirely commercial ads, initially for legitimate businesses like immigration law firms but over time only for scams as spam became illegitimate)

It was a mass email (sent to about 400 ARPANET users) advertising some computers from DEC: https://abusix.com/blog/the-birth-of-email-spam-gary-thuerks-1978-green-card-incident/

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