Jean-Claude Elias
Computer nuisances keep changing, not to say evolving over time, and the latest is being flagged as a spammer, with the dire consequence of being denied e-mail service.
Years ago users would mainly worry about hard disk failures, screens that would break and similar technical issues; it quickly became the least of their worries. After the price of basic hardware fell to incredible lows people stopped losing sleep over replacing it.
Then came viruses and life with the machines and the web would never be the same again. Still, with good antivirus and Internet security programmes, products that are inexpensive and easily available, the risk of infection can be reduced virtually to nil.
Though it has been affecting e-mail traffic and annoying users for a while now, this year spamming has acquired a new, more dramatic dimension. It has now grown into a most irritating e-mail issue and the worst is not when you receive these unwanted messages but when you are “flagged as spammer” by the Internet authorities! For once you are, you stop being able to send e-mails, or receive any, or even both; partially or completely.
How do you get “flagged as spammer”? There are three possibilities.
The first is when you ARE a spammer. Over a rather long period you keep sending messages to very large mailing lists, typically to parties and people you don’t personally know and who have not asked for your messages in the first place, this to promote various products, services or events. This is when you are the cyber criminal.
The second is when a third party hacks your e-mail address and sends massive spam in your name, without you being aware of it, of course. Your very e-mail address is therefore detected as a source of spam e-mail. This is when you are the victim.
The third is when you send legitimate mass mailing to large lists of people you know, or parties you have business with. Whereas this is justified, perfectly legal and does not qualify as spamming, it can sometimes be detected and flagged as such. This is when you are the victim because of the system mistakenly putting you in the spammer category.
If the first group deserves the punishment the other two don’t of course. Unfortunately cases where users are unfairly treated as spammers are dramatically increasing, the Internet authorities often being unable to tell the victim from the criminal, the legitimate from the legitimate.
Large organisations, businesses and corporations who have a server computer in their setup, especially with their own Internet domain name (@mycompany.com for example), are more at risk that private users who use straightforward e-mailing and services such as Microsoft’s hotmail, Google’s gmail or Yahoo’s mail.
The ugly part of being flagged as a spammer and being therefore denied part or all of the e-mail service lies in the difficulty of reversing the situation and going back to normal status. It takes the intervention of IT professionals with the Internet authorities and the ISP (Internet Service Provider) to remove the dreaded flag. It is neither a quick nor an easy procedure.
If sometimes things would go back to normal in a just a few days, in some cases it can take up to three or four weeks to undo the damage done. In the meantime the user suffers from e-mail service denial, something that nowadays is not much different from lack of oxygen to the brain - for some people at least.
Are there any preventive measures to take to avoid the shame, the frustration and the interruption of e-mail service, assuming naturally that you are not a cyber criminal who is planning to send spam intentionally?
Firstly ensure that you have not only a good antivirus programme but also solid Internet security software tools that will reduce the risk of seeing your e-mail address, mailbox and password stolen. Then avoid sending huge mass mailing too frequently, even if it is to those you know, just to avoid being suspected of being a spammer. Life with Internet and e-mail comes without any warranty, even for the innocent and the well-intentioned.
