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How many times have you received spam email?

Hundreds? Thousands?

Barely a day will go by where we don’t receive annoying emails with fake offers, scam attempts or unwanted newsletters that we divert straight into our junk folder.

But do you know why we have named these messages after tinned meat? ����ý Bitesize explores the origins of spam and other computer terms.

Spam

It’s almost 100 years old and sold around the world, but perhaps that isn’t Spam’s biggest claim to fame

The name has been used to describe unsolicited bulk emails since the 1990s, but to find out why, we need to head back to 1970.

Monty Python’s Flying Circus was in its second series on ����ý 1 in December 1970. One episode featured a sketch in a café, where Spam was a key ingredient in every item on the menu.

The characters broke out into a song, bombarding the audience by repeating the tinned item’s name over and over again.

Sounds familiar? The term soon made its way onto early forms of the web, with users frequently posting ‘spam’ onto messaging boards in order to push other text off the screen and take control of the conversation.

Its use evolved to refer to multiple postings, where users repeated the same text over and over again before also referring to unwanted emails.

Bug

When new software for your phone is released or you download the latest game for your console, you might sometimes notice a few things don't quite work as they're supposed to.

These problems are often known as bugs. But the first use of the term for a glitch in the system actually predates computers.

While working on a telegraph system, inventor Thomas Edison spoke of bugs in his design processes. He also referred to a ‘bug trap’ to isolate one particular error that was preventing messages from being sent.

The term spread but was popularised in 1947 at Harvard University in the United States. Computer programmer Grace Hopper noticed an error in the Mark II computer and after further investigations, discovered a dead moth in the relay preventing it from working.

In her notes, Hopper described it as the “first actual case of a bug being found” and its use for glitches and errors has continued ever since.

Surfing the Internet

While nowadays it’s all about the scroll, early online users were said to be surfing the internet.

Internet pioneer Mark McCahill, who worked on projects to create email systems and URLs, and online safety expert Jean Armour Polly are often credited with creating the phrase – but its origins actually lie in some clever wordplay.

One of the early Internet service providers in the United States was CERFnet. In 1991, they produced a comic book called ‘Captain Internet and CERF Boy’.

The characters used their powers to foil arch-nemesis Count Crakula’s plans to destroy their network. Owing to CERF’s pronunciation as ‘surf’, the characters travelled around by a flying surfboard – which in turn created the term ‘surfing the internet’.

Who knew that the real comic book master of the web wasn’t Spider-Man, but in fact, Captain Internet?

Phishing

Phishing and spam go hand-in-hand – with a large number of spam emails known as phishing scams.

These messages are often attempting to get users to provide personal details through deception. You’ve probably received dodgy-looking messages that look a bit like a missed delivery notification when you haven’t bought anything, the chance to exclusively trial a new product or a billing 'error' for a mobile phone from a company you’re not with.

They’re all classic phishing methods. The word is similar to fishing, which is a very basic description of what the scammers are trying to do. They’re casting their net wide in the hope of landing a big catch, such as someone’s bank details.

The use of ‘ph’ instead of the ‘f’ in fishing was common in the early days of internet speak, particularly among the hacking community and it’s from there that phishing was created.

There's definitely something fishy about phishing as it’s a type of online fraud which can carry heavy punishment. If you’re ever not sure where a message came from, or think something doesn’t look right, then don’t open any of the links or attachments and delete it straight away.