The Computer Corner

In a jam with spam
By Charles Miller, July 06, 2007

I just received a phone call from a friend in Europe wondering why I never responded to his email; and this is not the first such call I have received. Today, people are noticing more often that when they send an email; it never reaches its destination.

For years we have all taken for granted the dependability of email because it used to be that when you sent an email you could count on it getting there most of the time. There has never been a guarantee of this though. The situation is analogous to dropping a letter off at the post office. After you stick on a stamp and drop an envelope in the slot, you can be reasonably sure the letter will get to its destination, but there is no guarantee and never has been.

What has changed drastically in the last few months is that email has become something we can no longer rely upon. It pains me to say that, but to do otherwise is to deny the obvious.

The cause of the problem is the tidal wave of unwanted spam emails and the way that the internet industry is dealing with it. A year ago some industry analysts were saying that 50 percent of all email was spam. Today those same analysts estimate that the figure is closer to 90 percent.

Around the world, internet service providers (ISPs) such as our Cybermatsa, Prodigy, and Unisono are being bombarded with billions and billions of pieces of spam. Many of them are faced with the decision to do something about the spam or it will take over the storage space and bandwidth needed for legitimate traffic.

To reduce the flood of spam, local ISPs have started deleting spam by instituting various filtering systems. he problem is that accurately identifying spam is not easy; in fact it is almost impossible.

False positives occur when an automated spam filtering system also traps legitimate email. Frequently when this happens, neither the sender nor recipient knows of this. Sending back millions of “failed delivery” notices doubles the workload, so many providers do not bother.

The seriousness of the false positive problem is equivalent to the post office throwing out all your junk mail, but also throwing away some of your legitimate mail. And you would never know what they had thrown away.

Why is this happening to us? The simple answer is that the spammers have gotten very good at sending out spam that evades detection, and they are sending out much more of it. The ISPs are often unable to cope with the exponential growth in the numbers of emails their servers receive.

The future does not look promising at all. Cutting off spam at the source is all but impossible. Much of it originates in foreign countries outside the jurisdiction of authorities who could take action. Moreover, most spam originates from “spam zombies” or individual’s computers that have been infected with a program that makes them send out spam on behalf of the spammers.

All of this is even more of an acute problem for us here in San Miguel de Allende. Without warning or notice, many ISPs in the USA automatically delete any email originating in countries responsible for high volumes of spam. Unfortunately for us, Mexico is one of those countries.

I am sorry to say this, but 2007 looks to be the year that email becomes something we can no longer depend on. If your email is really important, you had better ask the recipient to acknowledge and follow up with a phone call if you do not hear back from them.

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 044-415-101-8528 or email FAQ@SMAguru.com.