Monday, October 25th, 2010, 9:09 am
E-mail Ruins Friendships Due to SPAM
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FEW months ago I started to phase out E-mail to an extent. I still use E-mail, but it’s just not a communication tool of choice. The frustration of falsely-flagged (and filtered) messages has convinced me that I made the right choice. Why should I spend half an hour in vain trying to just (re-)E-mail a friend messages that he did not receive for months because his ISP shot these messages down? This whole E-mail chaos (caused mainly by SPAM that compromised Windows boxes spew out) leads to degradation of relationships between people, it not only interferes with work (data loss). When people think that they get ignored simply because their E-mails are not received on the other side, then perhaps it’s time to give up on E-mail, then find a more reliable medium. Last month I reconsidered my position on E-mail, but after seeing it ruining more relationships — simply due to the loss of many messages in a row — I decided to just put friends before E-mail, even if that means not using E-mail unless there is no other choice.
Have any of your friendships been harmed by E-mail problems? Could it possibly happen without you knowing about it (due to communication problems, obviously)?
October 25th, 2010 at 1:53 pm
Yes, had problems with my ISP, Cox Communications. Not long after I reported outbound email filtering by Cox, my Cox mail filtering was progressively tightened. After a few months I was getting no mail at all through them and missed important personal and professional communications. While other people have told me similar stories of incompetence, this instance was clearly malicious and planned.
Almost everyone in the US is under the thumb of such a malicious, unregulated, private cable monopoly ISP that owes more to media companies and Microsoft than it does to customers. Email from them is especially terrible and should be avoided.
Google was the escape that worked. Because the ISP itself was malicious, they could block plaintext emails from my less technically savvy friends even if I were running my own mail server. Cox blocked ports to make that technical solution impossible anyway but people should be aware if their ISP is less heavy handed but equally malicious. Google’s encrypted connection denied the ISP any selective blocking. This leaves me at the mercy of Google until the rest of the world learns to use encryption or gets themselves a freedom box.
October 26th, 2010 at 7:29 pm
My email throughput has dropped over the last 6 months or so. I see it as a blessing. You know, as I was typing the previous sentence I think I know what the cause is. Social networking. The people who send me mail are the most likely to also network socially. My daughter is one of them. I just wish she check in with me once and a while.
October 26th, 2010 at 8:44 pm
@Richard Chapman
Yes, exactly. This was a major factor to me. I still use other tools to communicate with most people and I can check to verify in real time that no malicious filtering intercepted my messages.