It is possible that answering questions on a SAP interface newsgroup contributed to my downfall of a work e-mail address that is relatively free of spam, but that is not the entire cause of my new deluge of spam.

Long ago, in a galaxy far away, anti-spam software was created that worked on the basis of rules and the appearance of specific words. This was a good time for e-mail readers as spam declined sharply – at least in the actual e-mail inbox. Then hucksters invaded many websites and made fake accounts with false e-mail addresses and systems people generated a way to stop the creation of fake accounts: entry of a randomly generated string of characters on a graphic that the new user would have to enter in order to proceed. This was also a very good activity.

The picture on a webpage depicting text works because humans are able to understand the contents of letters that are placed on a graphic in a haphazard way better than computers can. Actually, an accurate statement would be that humans can understand letters haphazardly placed on a graphic and computers cannot.

Intermittently spam would get through the spam filters with small programs that generated random words that were not on the spam filtering software lists. These were not too bad.

Now; however, we have the current batch of spam e-mail. It is composed solely of text embedded in a graphic which cannot be easily interpreted by computer software. Combine these graphics with the random generated words for the subject and we have a path to my e-mail inbox that appears to be unencumbered by any attempt at stopping the spam.

It seems spammers are completely capable of learning from the defensive measures created by system administrators to protect seemingly unrelated systems (e-mail and bulletin boards).

What next in this harrowing tale to keep my inbox relatively free of spam or to inundate it with hundreds of e-mails that have nothing to do with me and everything to do with increasing the size of my genitalia and unwanted advise about the next hot stock to purchase?

Perhaps e-mail system administrators will develop the difficult software of interpreting the text embedded in an image and determining if this text is spam or not. One understands that the people to develop such software would be programmers. It is without a doubt that there are few programmatically achievable algorithms that can be created by one programmer that cannot be duplicated by any other programmer. If not reproduced by algorithm, perhaps the code will be kidnapped and used by others. Either way, the protections of embedded text to create new users in web sites will shortly be compromised as soon as we figure a way to avoid graphically created spam.

I have a singular thought about this everlasting war between system administrators and spammers: Who cares who wins? It really doesn’t take me that long to delete these e-mails. Is the e-mail from someone I know? Is the e-mail relevant or something I subscribed to? If no to both questions I press the shift delete buttons and it doesn’t bother me anymore. Even if I have 100 spam e-mails it doesn’t take me long and can sometimes be entertaining.

What disturbs me about spam is that everyone set the precedent for spam. I get spam in physical or snail mail all the time. Not only do I get this spam physical mail, but I’m forced to do something with this garbage! But where are the lawsuits about all this garbage I receive at home on a daily basis? Where is the outcry about all the wasted paper, inks and oil to transport this insidious physical spam that arrives at my house on a daily basis?

The outcry cannot be found because it does not exist. The non-existence of an outcry about physical mail spam is a tacit approval that spam is not wrong even when it costs you time and money to dispose. I can’t even send a message to someone to stop sending me these credit card offers, or these wonderful coupons I never use or great offers to repair my home.

There is only one reason why people fight about spam. It is because no matter what you do on your e-mail – you see spam and it irritates you.

If you really want to make a stand about spam and unsolicited offers that come to you – make a stand against physical spam as much as you do about e-mail spam. Fight against physical spam as it actually damages our environment as opposed to a few electrons transferred over the internet and the miniscule amount of energy it took to transport them. Fight against the system of coupons that supermarkets have created as an industry and tell them to find another way to track where you heard about a product and why you are buying it at their supermarket. Their marketing data simply isn’t more important than the environment or tying me up to throw out their garbage that they have sent to my house.

Can you imagine for a second – if someone sent you a bag of trash – would you cheerfully open it, look through it and then throw it out against your garbage? I don’t think so.

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About the author: Alexander Flynn has been many things in his short 34 years of life. He was a member of the Air National Guard in New Jersey (170th and 108th) and a unit in South Carolina for 10 years. He has been a surfer at night in Seaside Heights, New Jersey (ok, maybe so not so great at surfing). He has worked as a temp in offices, data entry, programmer, software designer, database maintenance, SAP ABAP programmer and as a sales representative.

He graduated High School in 1989, but not with any great honor. Frankly, school was the most boring exercise he has experienced. There were some teachers that were exceptions: Mrs. Higgins, Mr. Sninski, the high school electronics teacher, a band teacher, a summer school English 4 teacher and my geometry teacher were the best that he can remember at this particular moment. He attended community college and never took the SATs (small loophole) but continued on to a four year institution where he graduated with a B.A. in Economics. He has lived in the south of the United States where he failed to be assimilated and as a result returned to New Jersey.

He has been married for 8 years and currently has one child (2.5 years old) and hopes to have another. As an only child he can say that it seems he missed something in childhood compared to all the people he knows who had siblings and he hopes his son gets to experience having a sibling.

He has written over 20 articles on Useless-Knowledge accounting for over 20,000 words. He has traveled to a few countries and will state succinctly that the key to some knowledge is experiencing other cultures. Then you find out that the way things are at home is not the way they have to be. In his journeys he has discovered Finland to be one of the most beautiful places in the world.

The hope in writing for Useless-Knowledge or any other web site is to improve his writing skills so that he will be able to write Science Fiction and actually get paid for it. Perhaps one day he will even succeed at the dream formed when he was fifteen years old and write an entire Science Fiction novel.

Regardless of political leaning, religion or nationalism he hopes that you are all well and that you are safe.

His blog is located here: http://searchbalance.blogspot.com/ -which is updated periodically.

Email: rhadamygg@hotmail.com

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