Guilt by association 
By Charles Miller, June 23, 2006


This week's frequently asked question is one for which the answer could fill several columns. The question is: Why is it so difficult to send out email here in San Miguel?

The unfortunate truth is that if your email address ends in "@cybermatsa.com.mx," "@unisono.com.mx" or "@prodigy.com.mx" you may find yourself unfairly branded a pariah when you try to send email to your friends in the United States.

A lot of spam email originates in Mexico, and some internet service providers here have a bad reputation as "known spammers." Whether this reputation is deserved or not I will not address here, but the reputation is out there. Fairly or not, many other ISPs in the US and other countries have painted with a broad brush and have closed their mail servers to email originating here.

These other companies can easily tell when your mail ends in ".mx" that it originated in Mexico. The result of this is that, through no fault of your own, you are likely to find yourself unfairly labeled as guilty by association. From time to time your email will bounce; other times messages will just disappear and you will not know whether they went through or not.

This is profiling at its worst. You have never sent out a spam email in your life, but just because somebody else in Mexico once did, your emails do not go through.

Worse yet, there is absolutely nothing the local ISPs can do to correct this situation because the blocking is being done on the recipients' end. For the record, I think the local San Miguel ISPs-Cybermatsa, Telmex and Unisono-are doing a good job, and it is really unfair that they often get the blame for something that is not their fault.

This has been a problem for years, and though I try to avoid being fatalistic about it, I do not see the situation improving. If your email address ends in "dot mx" you are going to have to put up with less-than-reliable service. The only sure way to fix this problem is to use a SMTP server not located in Mexico.

A common misconception held by many internet users is that your internet access and your email have to be provided by the same company and are inseparable. Nothing could be further from the truth. Your ISP provides the phone line, cable or DSL to connect you to the internet as a whole. That ISP does not necessarily have to be the provider of your email service.

I personally use Prodigy as my internet provider here in San Miguel, and I use it to access my email service provided by a different company in Philadelphia. I pay extra for that service, but it works well and I have no trouble sending out emails.

The truth is that there are many other email services available from which you may choose. Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo are free. For a fee, Yahoo provides enhanced services, as do many others.

If reliable email is important enough for you to pay a few extra dollars every year, then that is something you have the right to do.

I appreciate the emails I receive from Atención readers, but if you fail to receive an answer it might be because I did not receive your email.

Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant, a frequent visitor to San Miguel since 1981 and now practically a full-time resident. He may be contacted at 044-415-153-8528 or email FAQ@SMAguru.com