THIS week marked the 30th anniversary for possibly the most annoying phenomenon to hit the IT world - spam. On May 6, 1978, marketing manager for Digital Equipment Corporation, Gary Thuerk, forever etched his place in history by drafting one message and sending it to each person on his 600-person mailing list, rather than send an individual email to each. Three decades later, spam is wreaking havoc on computers with 40 per cent of all emails considered spam, causing many computers to crash across all continents.