Getting through to Congress and practicing anonymity
By Charles Miller

Recently I attended a political discussion during which someone related how he had tried to make his voice heard by sending a broadcast email to every member of the US Congress. He admitted that almost all of them had bounced back to him and had never reached their destinations. Another person attending the meeting brought my name into the discussion when he referred to a suggestion I had made earlier as to how that particular problem might be mitigated.


Leaving the political discussion completely behind, the technical issues are interesting to examine and germane to every expatriate living in Mexico and using the internet. The problems the person encountered when he tried to bombard Washington, DC with his emails were twofold.

First, anyone who tries to send out 535 emails at once is probably going to encounter a limit imposed by their internet provider. If they do manage to send out that many, they are candidates for being branded an email spammer. The senders might be able to get away with this if they send out the emails 20 or so at a time over a few hours.

The second problem is that the receiving email server can easily identify the unique IP address of the sending computer. In order to combat spam, the mail server can be set up to reject emails when they detect a lot of email originating from the same address. It would appear the US Congress might have such a filter.

The person who was trying to inundate the US Congress with his message alleged that they had their system programmed to reject any email originating outside the US. From a technical standpoint, that is entirely possible. The internet has its own version of caller-ID and it is a simple matter to know from which country an email originates.

A good friend told me of trying to do some online banking while he was overseas. The result was that his account was immediately frozen when the bank saw he was connected from Turkey! A cogent argument can be made for this being necessary to prevent fraud, but it was an inconvenience to him.

If you want to see a demonstration for yourself, point your browser to http://whatismyipaddress.com (no www). The site will not only tell you that you are in Mexico but will also draw a map of Guanajuato showing the location of San Miguel de Allende (give or take about 40 km).

On this same site are links for topics such as “How do I hide my IP address?” and “Internet Anonymity” among others. The salient point as it relates to the current topic is how to get your email through if your congressman really is blocking all email from Mexico.

The vehicle for doing this is called an “anonymous proxy server.” There are commercial services such as “www.anonymizer.com” to hide your identity so that nobody (without a court order) will ever find out where you are. There are also free anonymous proxy servers such as “www.hidemyass.com.” When I entered the http://whatismyipaddress.com address I mentioned earlier into this site, it now tells me I am in Chicago and even showed me a map of the Loop.

Armed with this information, the next time you find yourself blocked from emailing someone, or prohibited from using your credit card online just because you are outside the borders of the US, try using an anonymous proxy server.

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 FAQ7@SMAguru.com.