Dude, Where's My E-mail?
By Bob Boyles, Principal
Smarter Distribution

Some of you may have noticed that the monthly emails from Smarter Distribution have been irregular in August and September. The blame lies in the internet viruses that hit hard in August and changed ways that many ISP's handle their email.

It used to be that viruses were bothersome but no real problem. You'd run Norton Anti-Virus on your PC and it'd clean up the viruses. The programs being transmitted today are making that quaint era of internet time seem like the 1950's with black and white TVs and the only choices of what to watch were the three major networks.

This was all changed by the "blaster" virus that was unleashed in August replicated itself by turning your own computer into an e-mail server and propagating itself through out your internal network and probing outside for new networks to infest. This resulted in a huge increase in email traffic and many systems across the country shutting down completely to avoid catching the virus and to avoid spreading the virus or to simply give the MIS managers of the world a chance to vaccinate their systems. Smarter Distribution sends out many e-mails each month and during the months of August & September less than 20% actually reached their intended audience.

The problem became so intense in August that many ISP's responded by limiting the amount of email traffic that can be sent from any one point on the internet. The general rule that I've found is that any person sending more than 200 emails in a 24 hour period is considered a potential virus and emails from that source are refused. This is a natural response on the behalf of the ISP's of the world and is meant to slow down the speed at which a virus can spread itself.

Unlike a lot of other pundits in the news I don’t blame Microsoft for not building a product that someone can not intentionally break. I've been exposed to the world of software creation, however small and brief that was, and to try and build a product that works is hard enough with out having to build a product that can not be broken by someone that is intentionally trying to break it.

Back in the infancy of the internet and e-mail these virus creators were actually though of as pest, interesting pests, but pests no less. Used to be when they caught a virus creator it made the news and the Judge gave the hacker a chance to work off his sentence by using his computer skills to help some non-profit organization, etc.

Today, these virus makers are imposing such a cost on the use of the internet that small companies, such as Smarter Distribution and many that are reading this article, are at a natural disadvantage when it comes to the costs imposed by the keepers of the internet. Virus coders and hackers are imposing a cost on all of the legitimate businesses in the world that are trying to earn a living by obeying the law.

We are going to learn to live with this problem. Any MIS manager can tell you that managing computers is a constant cycle of overcoming problems. But so far none of the proposed solutions have a real chance of working with out imposing too high a burden in cost or imposing too high a restriction upon the freedom of speech.

About Bob Boyles and Smarter Distribution:
Bob Boyles is principal of Smarter Distribution in Coppell, Texas, a strategic consulting business focusing on technology. He has served as an installation consultant for several distribution software companies. Reach him at (972) 304-1180, via e-mail at bob@smarterdistribution.com or on the Web at www.smarterdistribution.com

© Copyright 2003, Robert S. Boyles Jr. All rights reserved. This article cannot be reprinted or reproduced in whole or in part, without the express written permission of Robert S. Boyles Jr.