We’ve all found our email inboxes stuffed with spam, ranging from the annoying to the hilariously silly. But there’s more to spam than you might think…
* The first spam email was sent in 1978, advertising a product presentation to 600 addresses (the entire ARPANet at the time).
* About 80% of all spam is sent by fewer than 200 spammers.
* Microsoft founder Bill Gates receives over 4 million emails per year – and most of that is spam.
* Russian spammer Vardan Kushnir is believed to have spammed every single Russian internet user before his (violent, but apparently not spam-related) death in 2005.
* The most popular spam scam is the Nigerian 419 scam, where you’re asked to pay some money into an account to unfreeze it, in return for which the account holder will give you a whole lot more money. Amazingly, several big business CEOs have fallen for this before.
