Within last 30 days, I had two outgoing emails blocked by my own ISP.

The first was being delivered to a client of mine to inform them that I had received their p^ayment. The subject of email was "P^ayment R^eceived" (a common subject of sp^am messages) !!!

The second email hinged on an article I tried to deliver for another client. The dreaded "sp^am word" was "g^old" !!! We had to change name of article to get article past my own ISP's filters.

THE PROBLEM IN A NUTSHELL

Richard Lowe, owner of http://www.Internet-Tips.net says, "The Internet is communication. It's as simple as that."

The problem with ISP filtering is that ISP cannot know what we want to read and what we do not want to read. A single ISP has clients who use Internet for business, health, family, research or any of a dozen different purposes.

The person who wants to use Internet for family communications usually has no interest in business topics. And online business person may have no interest in family tree software or health products.

Yet, ISP has no choice but to block all kinds of "sp^am words" for full range of communication subjects.

As a result, family person may not see information concerning family tree software or other items regarding home life, and business person may not be able to receive information vital to operation of their business.

THE SCOPE OF THIS PROBLEM

We email junkies tend to subscribe to ezines covering a wide range of personal preferences. Unfortunately, a large number of ezines are being blocked by ISP's because ezines tend to meet at least two of criteria built into most sp^am filters (#1, #2 and sometimes #5).

Once again, fifth basic rule is dangerous one.

Sp^ammers are using more and more common words in their mailings that ISP's are beginning to block.

I can almost guarantee that if your own ISP was to turn off their sp^am filters for a month, you would get to see for first time a large number of ezines that you subscribed to way back when, but have never seen before.

Sure, you would see a large increase in sp^am coming into your email box, but you would also see all of mail that you want to receive that you have not been receiving.

WHERE SHOULD WE GO FROM HERE?

If we rely upon our ISP's to do filtering for us, then we are committing ourselves to receive only information that our ISP's filters are able to let us receive. It is as simple as that.

It is like news pundits on television say about war on terrorism, "We have a choice between freedom and security. The more of one we have, less of other we will have."

We have two choices:

1. We turn back tide of ISP controlled communication and accept responsibility of setting up our own filters to eliminate garbage in our inbox. 2. Or, we continue to rely upon our ISP's to filter sp^am by adding new words to their "sp^am word" lists, eliminating all personal control from our personal communications.

TURNING BACK THE TIDE WILL REQUIRE SOME CONCERTED EFFORTS

Our ISP's have been asked for so long to be our "Big Brother" to stem tide of sp^am. ISP's have come to point of believing that we are children who need to be protected from "morons" who are destroying this incredible communications tool.

To turn back this tide, we must be ready and willing to accept personal responsibility of controlling our own communications.

First, we must learn to use tools included in our email software that permit us to set up our own filters. Once we have basic understanding of how to set up our own email filters, we must progress to step two.

In step two, we must contact our ISP and let them know that we want to be responsible for ourselves. Our ISP must understand that we DO NOT want them to run sp^am filters on their email servers. We must declare that we do not them to baby-sit our communications for us. We must emphasize that we want to decide for ourselves what we want to read and what we do not want to read! We must emphasize that we would rather use our delete keys, than to rely upon their filters to not block any of our important communications.

You and I alone will not be able to convince our ISP's to ditch policy of acting as our "Online Big Brother". But, when enough of us have banded together and made our demands for open communications clear, ISP's will have to take notice and turn off their filters for fear of losing their customer base.

If we permit ISP controlled filters to continue to grow unabated, filters will eventually eliminate real value of email as a communications tool.

We must take a stand to reverse focus of War Against Sp^am! We must take a stand now to reverse tide, or we risk very real death of email communication and Internet!

For more information about "War Against Sp^am", visit following links:

http://PathTrax.com/x.pl/BP121,spam_war_crossfire http://PathTrax.com/x.pl/BP121,Will_Email_Kill_Email

What really makes me laugh is in body of email it reads, "Would you like to start a home business?" You just told me you went to my site, obviously you would know I ALREADY have a business! In fact, I have four of them so you may want to head back there that way you can learn REAL way to market online.

This last little episode really gave me a good chuckle, I got spammed by some person claiming I requested information (a private email address). So, I reported it to program owner and to autoresponder service that they were using (which is owned by a good friend of mine). The program owner allowed person to state their "case" and forwarded me a copy of their response.

This was their reply - "I'm not certain where I received that email address from. I used to buy email addresses, but I don't do that anymore. I have been marketing now for over two years and NEVER had a spam complaint, so I'm really appalled at this acusation. I have had 4 of my ISP accounts shut down, because maybe people were offended by ad copy. The person who sent you this complaint MUST be someone I have previously been in contact with because that is only way to get on my list."

Sheesh, I wonder WHO LIAR is in this case? There's nothing like a contradictive statement to hang yourself out to dry. In this case person should have just came right out and said, "Yeah, I harvested her email address", instead of talking in circles and digging themselves into a DEEPER hole. The great Homer Simpson once said, "DOH"! (but hey at least he admits to doing something STUPID!)