A couple years ago, when spam was making my life difficult, I went and got a pobox.com email account. The way that works is, you write to me at the pobox addy, and the email goes through a portal where it is screened. The good stuff is forwarded to my superdupersecret email address which is not publicized anywhere (except for family and close friends). Eventually the spamworld will probably find my superduper hide-out and I'll have to relocate -- but pobox should remain constant.

Except in the last six months or so pobox has been a little wacky. Some spam has been coming through, which I then report to them. Worse, I have this sense that real mail is not always coming through. Every day I get a discard report with a list of someplace between fifty and a hundred spam emails that have been rejected that day. I usually just run my eyes down the list in case something obvious jumps out at me. A neighbor, for example, sent me something and got stuck in the pobox filter. So I whitelisted her.

But there is a class of emails that might be real, but have been bounced. So the point of this post (finally): if you have written to me at one of the pobox email addresses, and you haven't heard back, it might be because I'm too distracted to give it the attention it deserves, or it might be because you've been caught up in the clutches of an overly conscientious filter.

The question is, what to do about that. I am loathe to give up pobox because while one or two good emails may get lost, fifty or a hundred offers for Nigerian bank deposits, sexual aids and hot chix are kept away from my inbox every day.

I do have one other idea, which I need to test out before I tell you about it. It may take some time. Until then, please be aware that if you have written, I may have seen it, but then maybe not.