How spam helped me to meet Yellow Flower

The joy of 20 sleazy e-mails a day is that, on your computer, an alternative persona is established

You are never alone, it has been said, when you are online, participating in the great community of the web, and now I know that it's true. Recently, while sending an e-mail, I was interrupted by a gentle, inviting "ping" sound, and a small pop-up appeared in the corner of the screen. I had a buddy online, I was told, and had been sent an instant message.

This was odd since, so far as I knew, I had no buddies. A number of friends communicate by e-mail but they are not part of the buddy system set up by my internet provider AOL, an arrangement whereby others can tell whether you are online and interrupt you for a chat. Since AOL has a reputation for being rather a naff and nannyish server, the option is not open to most of my acquaintances and, besides, no normal, sensitive person would bust into a friend's private cybernetic space with an instant message.

Of course, I answered it. My buddy turned out to be someone called Yellow Flower and she – I just sensed it was a she – was terribly friendly. She had read one of my columns and thought it was neat. I liked that. What had the column been about? Yellow Flower could not remember exactly but it had made a real good impression on her when her teacher had shown it to the class.

Er, teacher? It suddenly occurred to me that I was being lured into an inappropriate communication by a sweaty, middle-aged operative from the FBI's porn squad, but no – Yellow Flower was a perfectly respectable age for a buddy, 21, and her instant messages were entirely innocent. She asked what I thought about the war in Iraq. She thought it sucked, and so did I.

A sort of relationship developed. Yellow Flower must have spent a lot of time online because I became used to being interrupted by her messages. She went to Hawaii on holiday, but was kinda bored. She was relieved that the Iraq thing was over. Had I written any articles recently?

Then something sad happened. One morning, she sent me a message full of smiley symbols and exclamation marks but, as I was about to reply, my computer had a nasty turn and I lost contact. When I returned, Yellow Flower was gone. There had been a cybernetic misunderstanding, the equivalent of someone accidentally cutting a friend dead at a party.

It was probably at the moment when my virtual relationship with Yellow Flower hit the buffers that I realised that one of the aspects of the internet which annoy other people – that you get pestered by strangers – is precisely what I like about it.

Apparently, this is unusual. The problem of spam, as unsolicited e-mail offers and adverts are called, has become a major cause for concern. Last week, a "Spam Forum" took place in Washington at which it was revealed that more than half the e-mails now sent are adverts and, of these, 66 per cent are fraudulent in some way. Ninety per cent of those offering "business opportunities" were cons, the free holidays rarely materialised, while other services – on-line offers of Viagra, the chance to acquire a lovely young bride from Russia, enlargement treatments for penises, overnight university degrees – were almost always spam scams as well. Those lured on to one porn site had secretly been hooked up to a line costing £4.40 a minute.

According to a delegate appearing at the Spam Forum, the problem is now so serious that the future of e-mail is in jeopardy. In America, legislation will soon be introduced which will impose fines or up to a year in prison for internet fraudsters. In the state of Virginia, the home of AOL, anyone found guilty of sending more than 10,000 false messages can be sent down for five years. Over here, the Office of Fair Trading is working with the American Federal Trade Commission on ways of controlling this kind of behaviour.

It seems a lot of fuss about nothing. The joy of receiving 20 or so sleazy advertisements every day is that, within the privacy of your own computer, an alternative persona is established. Briefly, you become a quaking, nerdish, lonely individual who is desperately short of money, who longs to take a free holiday in Florida, who has a penis that is not only tragically small but needs Viagra to make it work at all, who would like to snoop on others but is terrified that his own computer activities might be traced and who, when asked for his bank details by someone in Nigeria anxious to smuggle out millions of dollars, sees an excellent business opportunity.

Every day you glance at the e-mail subject headings awaiting your consideration – "Increase the mass of your member considerably!", "Don't pay so much for a mortgage!!", "You'll like this!!!" – and, with a joyous sense of liberation, you delete them, remember how privileged and lucky you are, and turn to e-mails from your buddies in the real world.

terblacker@aol.com