It's A Small World After All?

This morning in my Anti Spam Log I talked about the fact that it's a small world after all. But is it really?

I received a piece of spam which had my email address in the "BCC", and had my brother's email address in the "To" line. What an odd coincidence! But it's probably much more likely than it seems. These "small world" coincidences are probability questions, and we often don't consider all the variables involved.

Here's another example. A couple months ago I went to a concert with Steven Curtis Chapman, Casting Crowns, and Chris Tomlin. It was at the Cumberland County Civic Center, and there were thousands in attendance.

Before the concert I looked across the Civic Center and spotted - way over on the other side - my old friend Nate, who I hadn't seen since sometime last year. What are the odds that I would be looking in just the right place at the right time to see him? Not real high odds. It's a small world, right?

No...because even though the odds of my spotting Nate specifically were small, the odds of my finding someone I knew are much higher, since there were undoubtedly hundreds of people I knew at that concert. And if it had been any of the other's, I also would have thought "what are the odds?"

Here's another one. I was recently in Massachussetts at a Christian Camp, and someone (after finding out my last name, and that I was from Maine) said to me "Are you related to Greg Twitchell?"

Well yes I am! What are the odds? Seemingly pretty small. Since there are oodles of Twitchell's in Maine! Yet...

This person knew Greg from a Christian College. Ahh...now we're shrinking the playing field quite a bit! How many Twitchell's in Maine would you expect to go to a Christian College? A significantly smaller number. The odds suddenly leaped upward!

So, what about this spam - oddly enough - sent both to my brother and myself? Also not so surprising. After all, Jonathan owns a website, and I own several websites, and all of my sites link to one another, and Jonathan's links to at least a couple of mine. What does that mean? It means that an email harvester which finds his email address has a very short journey to find my email address.

The odds of sharing spam with my brother are significantly higher than the odds of sharing spam with Wifred P. Murgatroid from East Timbuktu, North Dakota. But would I be surprised about sharing spam with Wilfred? Nope!

Then there's the other explanation, provided by my brother Arnold:

Quote:

Well, its either that or they are monitoring your emails...

Yeek!!!