I rarely read the spam that comes my way, but every once in awhile, I'll look at a few of them, just out of morbid curiosity. I don't click on links, of course.

And something struck me about the most recent email that has offered to make me rich beyond my wildest dreams. It was familiar enough. It came from some poor lady in South Africa whose rich husband was murdered by some political thugs, and if only I could let her wire all of that money of hers into my bank account for her to get later, I'd get a cut of her $12 million. Something like that. I didn't look at it for long. But what jumped out at me was how this woman said she had reached me:

I got your contact through network online hence decided to write you.

Sure, the sentence construction is poor, but the two words that caught my attention were, "Network online." Obviously, this spammer is thinking of Facebook, MySpace or some other online network. At least I assume so. And it just made me think that as unsophisticated as this letter was, it was slightly more sophisticated than in the past, where I would receive these letters from people who didn't really explain how they found me.

And while it may seem like nobody should be falling for this sort of thing in 2008, in 2007, $3.2 billion dollars were lost to these sorts of emails -- phishing -- in the United States.

It used to be pretty simple. Wake up, brush your teeth, talk to your spouse and kids, go work, come back, watch TV, straighten up the house or play with the kids, and go to bed. The next day: repeat.

Now, of course, the lines are blurred. We're often emailing our kindergarten's teacher with an apology for not bringing this week's snack and then rushing off to a meeting with the boss. Or we'll be at home in bed, watching late night TV and answering email -- from a client at work.

All of this means that things get complicated when employers and their employees don't get along, since when lawsuits arrive, email leaves one of those paper trails that can help bolster or destroy someone's case.

Several days ago, the 30th anniversary of spam came and went.

We're talking email, and not Spam, the food product. Anyway, I looked at quite a few articles that ran on the day of the anniversary May 3 or around then, like this story that originally appeared in The Washington Post, and I can't find any that quoted the man who began it all, Gary Thuerk. I was particularly interested in what he might have to say because I was lucky enough to interview him for Entrepreneur magazine during the 25th anniversary of spam.

At the time, I was getting more spam than I ever had in my life. I get a lot now, but in 2003, I was bombarded, and my computer was riddled with viruses and Trojan horses and other fun things. So when I was assigned to interview Thuerk, I had a lot of choice words prepared for him. I was going to light into him like a barbecue. I couldn't wait to pummel him with my gratitude for what he did on May 3, 1978, which is to be the first to send an unprompted email to a small but select number of people who had email, and he tried to sell these elite computer users, naturally, a new type of computer. I admit I wasn't thinking like a professional, but had made this personal. I wanted to do my best 60 Minutes Mike Wallace impression, and for Thuerk to fold like a house of cards and apologize for unleashing such a rotten practice into the world.