Email and the challenge of Spamming.

Email is such an important replacement for what is now considered snail mail (the old fashion mail sent through the post office).

Almost everyone has email and we tend to use it daily. But what happens when it breaks? And what breaks it more times then not?

From my experience SPAM breaks more peoples email then anything else. We get so annoyed with the constant barrage of unwanted SPAM that we have gone through some drastic measures to stop it. The more we try to stop SPAM the more SPAMMERS find a way around it so that they can continue to SPAM us.

It is a constant battle. First everything works. We send email and receive only the email we want. Then somehow a SPAMMER gets our email address. Sooner or later this is bound to happen because of something we did. Or because the SPAMMERS have managed to guess our email name. The more generic of an email address we have the more likely they will guess it and open the SPAMMING flood gates. The more convoluted our email name the less likely. But then the name becomes so difficult for those who want to send us legit email that one typo can bring it to its knees.

Once SPAM starts we find our inbox flooded with unwanted emails. We might have hundreds of unwanted emails for every legit one that we receive. The SPAMMING gets so bad that it bogs down our email servers to the point that they are forced to make changes in order to allow normal email to work. It gets so bad that we can loose a legit email in all the noise of SPAM.

To stop SPAMMERS our ISP providers have been forced to spend millions of dollars and wasted man hours trying to find ways to stop SPAMMING and at the same time SPAMMERS try their best to get SPAM in our inbox’s.

For reasons beyond my control both my parents and myself have lost each others phone numbers. Email is our only way to reestablish communication and it has been SPAMMED to the point that it has been broke for six months. In the World of email this is an awful long time. As soon as I find a way to beat the SPAMMERS they will find another way to get around it.

My parents system is rather simple. If your email is not an allowed list then it is deleted automatically. I can’t change email address’s whenever my email breaks. Any new account I send will be rejected by their filters. I must make my email work.

On my end my ISP (Inside the Philippines) has so many users with computers that do not have legit operating systems. This country has such a large black market on pirated programs. My ISP is forced to install some rather sophisticated software on their servers that one wrong parameter, one mistake anywhere, and all email stops.

I can’t send email to my parents. I can receive theirs and I hope they realize my dilemma and send me their phone number so that I can call them. All I need is one number and then we would be back in business. My email name is simple it is my last name @ the providers base mail address. The SPAMMERS know the generic address and all they have to do is send blind email to all known last names and in that way they find me. I should change my email name but frankly I like the simplicity of only having to use my last name. And frankly being the only one who can do it. No one else can because I have it already. In the end I have made it so easy for the SPAMMERS to guess my email address. All they have to do is send the correct email and monitor the responses they get back from their servers. When they find one they then sell it off and the flood gates from hell open up.

I’m tired, my parents are having health issues and I can’t make contact because of one or more SPAMMERS on the Internet. All mail I send bounces back to me. Luckily all mail sent to me appears to make it to me. But I can’t be sure how much is lost via anti-spamming programs that key on something and mistakenly flag it as SPAM.

My life would be so much simpler if SPAMMING could be stopped. and I know of no way to guarantee a way to stop all SPAMMERS.

I can buy software on my end that will filter only emails from known good addresses. This would work until my ISP makes a change in their system to reduce wasted SPAM on their end that sooner or later even that will fails.

So the battle continues. SPAMMES SPAM and we and our ISP providers spend thousands of hours and lost money trying to foil the last wave of SPAMMING. The sad part it that the SPAMMERS are the ones who are winning more obtain then not.

Now if I could only SPAM the SPAMMER. Imagine a SPAMMER who can’t do anything because he is SPAMMED to death. Now that would be justice!

My Guardian Angel watches over me:

Yesterday while I was taking my car to the dealer for maintenance I had a little fender bender.

An older Filipino man was following me to closely and he ended up rear ending my car with his moped. My mind was racing with past horror stories of foreign nationals who have had accidents with the locals. One crooked cop and some false witness reports and the foreigner is out thousands of dollars.

I pulled over and a traffic enforcer immediately came over to me trying to explain to me that the man needed to go to a hospital and that I would need to pay for his expenses. I told the man that I was not at fault that the man had clearly rear ended me. The traffic enforcer had the man pull up his shirt and leg pants to show the damage. I truly felt sorry for the man but I was never going to admit fault. He asked me what we should do. I told him to call a police officer to come to the scene to investigate.

It didn’t take very long and a PNP police officer arrived at the scene. He came up to me and asked me what had happened. I told him that the man had rear ended me. The police officer looked at my car and noted small damage and asked me if I wanted compensation. I told him I didn’t want any compensation I just wanted the man to understand that I was not a fault. The police officer went over to the man and explained it to him. The man came over to me and we shook hands. The police officer gave me back my driver’s license and told me that I could leave. I sat in the car a few minutes to make sure I was over what had just happened. The police officer came back over to me to make sure I was OK. I told him I just wanted to wait a few more seconds. I then I drove away.

Many people told me how lucky I was that I had got a good police officer instead of a bad one. Others told me I should go out an by a lottery ticket as this was obviously a lucky day for me. I would like to think it was more then that. I know there are bad cops here but I want to believe that for the most part most are just trying to do their job as best as they can.