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Father of spam says he has no regrets

Gary Thuerk sent promo e-mail in ’78

Gary Thuerk says being called the father of spam has brought him a certain notoriety. "People wanted to come and talk to me. Want my autograph. Picture. All that stuff. And I like doing it."

There’s a glaring omission on Gary Thuerk’s business card: No e-mail address.

That’s unusual, given that the Colorado Springs resident is an information technology consultant.

Is it because he doesn’t want to get junk e-mail? "No, not really," said Thuerk. "My e-mail address has changed several times."

The omission is particularly ironic. Thuerk has been dubbed the "father" of a type of e-mail that Internet users around the globe despise: spam.

An article in the March 2003 issue of PC World magazine cited Thuerk as the person who sent the first unsolicited commercial e-mail over an early version of the Internet called the ARPANET.

The date: May 1, 1978.

By Roger Fillion, Rocky Mountain News

Full Story: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/tech/article/0,2777,DRMN_23910_4569238,00.html

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