And so it was in 2009 that a brief hiatus, or rather a stalemate, befell the opposing sides. Despite the cascading billions of spam mail flooding the internet and swallowing vast terabytes of bandwidth – armies of drone zombie computers silently doing the bidding of distant masters scattered across the globe – Gmail and Thunderbird kept most of it at bay.
On any given morning, as email inboxes began receiving their daily flood of solicitations for Viagra, Cialis and various love potions, phony UPS delivery notices, inexpensive designer watches, pirated software, sly attempts to redirect traffic to malicious software, “phishing” expeditions, pretend newsletters and fraudulent notices from banks, communication supposedly from the FDIC, greeting cards from “family,” contest winner announcements, airline specials, communication credited to the IRS about refunds or unpaid taxes, regulated pharmaceuticals, and so on, just as quickly the spam filters shunted the flood into segregated “junk” and “spam” folders where their contents lay dormant and inactive.
As in any war, there were casualties, of course. In some cases, it was those sorry few who too old or vulnerable or inexperienced to fully understand the battle being waged would click on links within these spam mails and set loose the monster to feed on their own computer and join the ranks of zombies. And the web backbone itself, open to any and all emails legitimate or not, suffered as did the companies enlisted to support it. Routers and servers, jammed and pushed beyond their limits of delivery timed out, clogged and had to be re-booted. New equipment designed to handle greater capacity was mobilized, at great expense.
But the heart of the battle is not fought online, but in the mind of spam programmers. Even as the stalemate served to inoculate the population from the worst savagery of battle, plans were being drawn to escalate the conflict and break through the spam defenses. At one time, spam used phony company names, but now what seemed like individuals were the sender. As the filters became smarter, even this “personal” looking spam mail was detected and removed. For a short time image files fooled the filters, but this tactic did not succeed for long. A thrust here, and parry there, the duel continued.
And then, all of a sudden, the unthinkable occurred. The filters, having gained what could be called primitive intelligence, began to flood the spammers with their own spam mail. A pitched battle ensued in which the zombies and their masters found themselves on the receiving end of their own spam. A great circle of karmic retribution ensued, which though partly paralyzing the internet for months, finally revealed the identities of compromised machines and shut them down. A great silence cast a blanket of peace over the web.
Reports of email loneliness were reported on CNN. Despite the seeming inconvenience, spam had been of comfort to many, and nothing had yet arisen to replace it. So it was that “spamusic” arrived, a gentle symphony of pure sound selling nothing. This was followed quickly by “spart,” “spoetry” and “spamovels;” a huge burst of free creativity filled the vacuum on what had been the battlefield of spam war.
And so it remained until 2012, when dramatic global events changed web and world history forever.
