E-mail MESS!

Don't you hate it when you send an e-mail and the intended recipient doesn't get it?

Don't you hate getting Spam?

Don't you hate it when people steal from you?

Don't you hate it when all of these things happen at the same time?

About two weeks ago I began to realize that people weren't getting my e-mails. After some work I realized that my e-mails were getting spam filtered by other peoples' mail accounts. Then I started getting mysterious returned-mail e-mails for e-mails that I didn't send, all with spam-related subject matter.

Uh-oh.

Nearest I can tell, a spam bot is using my gmail address to send spam to a bunch of contacts on my gmail contacts list, causing MIT's spam filters to think I'm a spam bot. My MIT e-mail and gmail e-mail are linked such that whenever I use my MIT address it sends the e-mail via gmail, so even though the spambot couldn't get a hold of my MIT address, the fact that it's using my gmail one is hurting the credibility of my MIT address. The only solution I could come up with for this is to host my MIT e-mail on a new and different gmail account.

I set up my new gmail account, imported all my old contacts, and set it up to work with my MIT address. Then I began POPing all of my e-mail from my old gmail account into my new gmail account. This brings me to the point of this entry:

1) The transfer has been going for almost a week now and is just about to finish up.
2) All of my filters are totally screwed up.
3) I'm trying to figure out what e-mail is being forwarded to my new account from my old one.
4) I can't tell what's being sent to my gmail address and what's being sent to my MIT address.
5) I've been receiving about 10 e-mails every minute for the last week during the transfer.

In essence, my e-mail status is totally hosed. If you e-mail me and I don't respond it's because I probably lost your e-mail in the deluge of e-mails I've been getting and I didn't flag it or group it or filter it. I'm doing my best and hopefully I'll be able to get all this sorted out within the next week.

Also, it sucks that I have to use a separate Google account for e-mail since my YouTube and blogger account are both the same as my gmail. I have to sign in and out of Google each time I want to switch between gmail and YouTube or Blogger. I'll probably get this all worked out, but the Internet is being mean to be right now so I apologize for any confusion for a little while.