In the early days of the Internet, mail servers were not as robust and redundant as they are today (depending on the size and budget of your ISP, their capabilities may still be questionable) so these "spam attacks" would not only slow systems down, but had a tendency to literally burn up the system. Again depending on the ISPs capabilities, hardware budget and ability to quickly get more pieces to put Humpty Dumpty back on his wall, along with all the settings that were lost when a catastrophic failure of this magnitude occurred, it could take days or even weeks to get everyone's email back up and running and yes, all messages on the old server were generally lost forever.

Today, most ISPs have redundant systems, multiple computers that serve different functions, back up protocols and recovery scenarios in the event of a system failure, but those systems are still far from perfect. That, plus the reality that spam has increased exponentially, results in the fact that the hardest part of being an ISP is keeping email running properly. Take, for instance the example above where one million emails were sent. Now consider that today that number can be closer to one hundred million. Sending an email is free. The cost of your ISP service is greatly increased due to all the redundant hardware, the shortened life of these systems due to the abusive spam sent and received and the cost of the people with the technical abilities to maintain, find, block and delete intrusive spam that floods our networks.

Virus' are a piece of cake compared to this. At least a virus is overt and any ISP worth his salt filters them on their end so a majority of virus' are caught before you get them and before they infect the ISP's systems. Spam mail looks like anyone else's email, so often, until the ISP is flooded with ten times more copies of a particular email than they have clients, they don't realize that it is spam. Then, reminiscent of cleaning up a radioactive spill, the ISP's support staff stops working on other new and unique offerings and spends hours deleting these messages out of their systems so real mail can get through. How does this affect you? Services slow to a crawl and often require the shutting down of a system to complete needed maintenance. Clients leave for other ISPs because they feel their ISP, the one who sustained the attack, is unreliable and people have no tolerance these days for an ISP that does not give immediate response. The client calls technical support because of the issue and can not get through because tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions of people, all seemingly with the patience of a hungry lion in a cattle corral, are also calling in to find out when the mail will be back up and are shocked that, at 2AM, for their account which generally costs less per month than what they paid Denny's for a Grand Slam breakfast, their ISP does not have the staff on site to take their call. The ISP loses money paying overtime to bring in staff to try to answer most of the calls, they lose money paying overtime to staff that has to be called in to fix the problem and they lose money because of people leaving them and demanding refunds due to the ISPs "incompetence". Don't get me wrong, you have a right to be angry. You paid for a service and deserve to have it there when you need it, but direct your anger where it belongs; at the spammer.

ISPs are getting better at detecting patterns and blocking these "spam attacks". Yes, attacks, let's call them what they are. It is not something as innocuous as "unsolicited email" and perhaps I am being politically incorrect in labeling this an attack but it is electronic terrorism, plain and simple. An unmarked truck with a massive payload is dropped on your ISPs systems and there is very little recourse to be taken against the offending party. Most of these attacks originate out of the country and their sender is untraceable. Blocking one entry point only forces the offending party to locate another one and there are millions of potential sending points. We do what we can but it is often not enough.

What is the solution? I do not have the answer. Stricter punishments to those caught spamming would be a good start but catching the offending party is generally difficult and often impossible. More redundant systems and more creative code on the computers to detect inbound spam helps but it just serves to make the attackers better at what they do. They say if you put a bell around a cat's neck, it just makes him a better hunter. Same thing applies here. At this point you are probably saying to yourself, "I guess I will be a victim of this type of electronic terrorism and there is nothing I can do about it". Well, there is a short term solution and that is redundancy on your part. Don't depend on one ISP for email. We do our best, but if you have read this far you know what we are up against and you know we have no rock solid solution to the problem. Have a fallback email address that you can use in case of emergency. Have important documents delivered to both addresses, have the sending party follow up with a phone call to make sure you received the message or call them to find out when it was sent. Inconvenient? Yes. But in this day and age, people you deal with should understand and should be willing to tolerate this.

Unfortunately, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Greater restrictions and penalties probably will not stop it. Charging for email would but that undermines the spirit in which the Internet was founded and I would never support that option. So we continue this game of cat and mouse and hope that we can stay one step ahead of the spammers and hope that you, our valued clients, understanding the dilemma, will support us with your tolerance. The goal of any ISP is 100% uptime. Under normal circumstances with all the various networking, hardware and routing that goes on, this is challenging but doable. With the added threat of electronic abuse we will all fall. We will, however, get back up, brush ourselves off and carry on. Hopefully you will be there to support us as we do all we can to support you.