the Green Card spam
loreops culturesecurity
The April 1994 Usenet mass-posting by two immigration lawyers that made commercial spam a household problem.
Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel crossposted a 'Green Card Lottery' ad to thousands of Usenet newsgroups at once, ignoring every community norm of the pre-commercial Internet. The furious backlash, cancelbots, and press coverage that followed effectively founded anti-spam culture. Where the 1978 ARPANET message was a one-off, this was the moment spam became an industry.