FWIW now fishing for readers on Bluesky Social

I stopped being an early adapter of technology many years ago when I bought what would today be described as a tablet, but one loaded with Microsoft Windows for Pen Computing ver. 1.0.

It was going to replace my yellow pad for taking notes -- just to cite one example, client-ready deposition summaries would now just be a simple matter of editing my notes, or so I thought -- and it was going to be Paradise.

As the use of 'Microsoft' and 'ver. 1.0' in the same sentence will suggest to most rational people with a little common sense and any experience of technology at all, the experiment failed. Miserably. I can't say it was Paradise Lost, because Paradise was never attained. Nor were any of the hoped-for benefits.

But I'll save the details of that scarring experience for a sad chapter in the book I'm supposed to be writing.

Suffice to say, for the present, that I didn't jump to create a Bluesky account as soon as it became publicly available. Rather, I hung back, watching the farewell to X posts piling up on X and Facebook, and starting to worry that I might be losing potential readers here on FWIW because they would no longer see my posts on X promoting each new FWIW post.

I spend far too much time on X as it is, sifting through the muck and mire for kernels of apparently accurate information... or just looking for craziness (and usually finding it). So the last thing I want to do is dive into X's new competitor... I am terrified that I might start comparing how things are presented on Bluesky vis a vis how the same topics are presented on X and who is saying what where (and whether they are saying different things on differnt platforms) and I'll squander my remaining vision and forfeit untold hours of whatever years I have remaining in the process....

But I've done it anyway. I have today joined Bluesky. I will try and avoid getting sucked in... and probably fail there, too.

If you wish, however, you can follow me on Bluesky @jackleyhane@bsky.social.

Yes, that's not a very imaginative handle.

Meanwhile, I also remain on X at the equally unimaginative @jackleyhane.

Probate Division update: Docket books out, screens and keyboards in

A note and an accompanying photo from the Chief Judge's Office:

Cook County Chief Judge Timothy C. Evans met with Probate judges and staff on Friday, September 27 to celebrate the opening of new Probate Division Courtroom 1813. This new courtroom replaces the antiquated docket room and is updated with high tech equipment which will improve access to justice for lawyers and litigants. As of October 1, 2024, cases assigned to guardianship of minors' estates Calendar 1, are being heard in the new courtroom by Judge Daniel R. Degnan. Pictured are Judge Terrence J. McGuire, Chief Judge Evans, Judge Degnan (seated), Presiding Judge Daniel B. Malone, Judge Susan Kennedy-Sullivan, and Judge Amee Alonso.

I wonder if there are any docket books left in the Daley Center; this may be the finish. When I started out, there were docket books in every division. Unlike a lot of court files, the old books were too big and heavy to grow legs and walk away. The status of any given case could be ascertained, even if the file jacket was missing. Or, and this sometimes proved to be the case, the file was not missing, but actually accounted for, only in another location, such as a courtroom.

Technology is great -- you're reading this, aren't you? -- but it is subject to hacking by enemies foreign and domestic, sunspots, power outages, and (perhaps, someday) control of all those AI entities we're so heedlessly setting up and letting loose. Is there no one left who saw James T. Kirk or Dr. Who fight existential battles with megalomaniacal machines? Those old TV shows were warnings, people....

UPDATE: Systems coming back at Daley Center... and maybe across the county, too

This morning's Internet outage impacting the Daley Center was apparently countywide, according to multiple sources.

What happened, and why, is still unknown, but it seems that the entire Cook County WAN developed problems with Internet traffic -- slow-loading pages to the point of pages timing out, the kind of stuff that happens on my ancient laptop and even-older desktop on most days ending in -y. Outlook apparently continued to function. Phones, too. But the problem, whatever it was, was not confined to one office or one building.

None of the people I've communicated with this morning are technical people, so I can't provide any information about why this may have happened.

But the problems are apparently subsiding.

Of course, now I'm trying to confirm that, too. *Sigh* (Updating this update to add that multiple sources are saying all the technology is working again.)

If I get anything reasonably plausible from anyone who has knowledge about the cause of the problem (the morning rain or the almost-full moon are probably not to blame here) I will pass it along.

Coronavirus impacts even the taking of depositions in Illinois

Before the world ended, Illinois Supreme Court Rule 206(h) provided:

Remote Electronic Means Depositions. Any party may take a deposition by telephone, videoconference, or other remote electronic means by stating in the notice the specific electronic means to be used for the deposition, subject to the right to object. For the purposes of Rule 203, Rule 205, and this rule, such a deposition is deemed taken at the place where the deponent is to answer questions. Except as otherwise provided in this paragraph (h), the rules governing the practice, procedures and use of depositions shall apply to remote electronic means depositions.

(1) The deponent shall be in the presence of the officer administering the oath and recording the deposition, unless otherwise agreed by the parties.

(2) Any exhibits or other demonstrative evidence to be presented to the deponent by any party at the deposition shall be provided to the officer administering the oath and all other parties within a reasonable period of time prior to the deposition.

(3) Nothing in this paragraph (h) shall prohibit any party from being with the deponent during the deposition, at that party’s expense; provided, however, that a party attending a deposition shall give written notice of that party’s intention to appear at the deposition to all other parties within a reasonable time prior to the deposition.

(4) The party at whose instance the remote electronic means deposition is taken shall pay all costs of the remote electronic means deposition, unless otherwise agreed by the parties.

Now, at the end of the world, any depositions will be remote depositions.

And the old rule runs afoul of new social distancing requirements -- requiring the court reporter to be with the witness, for example.

So, yesterday, the Illinois Supreme Court issued a new, temporary Rule 206(h) (new language indicated by underscore, deleted language indicated by strikeout):

Remote Electronic Means Depositions. Any party may take a deposition by telephone, videoconference, or other remote electronic means by stating in the notice the specific electronic means to be used for the deposition, subject to the right to object. For the purposes of Rule 203, Rule 205, and this rule, such a deposition is deemed taken at the place where the deponent is to answer questions. Except as otherwise provided in this paragraph (h), the rules governing the practice, procedures and use of depositions shall apply to remote electronic means depositions.

(1) Reserved. The deponent shall be in the presence of the officer administering the oath and recording the deposition, unless otherwise agreed by the parties.

(2) Any exhibits or other demonstrative evidence to be presented to the deponent by any party at the deposition shall be provided to the officer administering the oath and all other parties within a reasonable period of time prior to the deposition, unless the deposition participants are able to view the exhibits in real time during the deposition.

(3) Reserved. Nothing in this paragraph (h) shall prohibit any party from being with the deponent during the deposition, at that party’s expense; provided, however, that a party attending a deposition shall give written notice of that party’s intention to appear at the deposition to all other parties within a reasonable time prior to the deposition.

(4)The party at whose instance the remote electronic means deposition is taken shall pay all costs of the remote electronic means deposition, unless otherwise agreed by the parties.

(5) Time spent at a remote electronic means deposition in addressing necessary technology issues shall not count against the time limit for the deposition set by Rule 206(d), by stipulation, or by court order.

(6) No recording of a remote electronic means deposition shall be made other than the recording disclosed in the notice of deposition.

Even lawyers are beset by technical difficulties (actually I think we may be more prone to these than most) -- so the new rule wisely provides that technical difficulties will not count against the three-hour deposition time ordinarily permitted for depositions.

Also note the order stresses that no recording other than that provided for by notice will be permitted -- although you have to wonder who is going to take a video deposition of a picture on a laptop in the first place....

We are now all involuntary experts in Zoom -- and recordings can be made of Zoom meetings.

But not legally.

Court proceedings are now taking place every day on Zoom -- and the Circuit Court of Cook County has made it abundantly clear that "any video recording, audio recording, photographing and/or reproducing of the livestream is strictly prohibited. The recording, publishing, broadcasting or other copying or transmission of courtroom proceedings by video, audio, still photography or any other means is strictly prohibited by Illinois Supreme Court Rule 68(A)(8) and is subject to the penalties for contempt of court."

In other words, don't do it.

And, while we're on the subject of don't do it, the Supreme Court issued a comment with the new, temporary rule 206(h):

Where a deponent testifies from a remote location and no neutral representative or representative of an adverse party is present in the room with the testifying deponent, care must be taken to ensure the integrity of the examination. The testifying deponent may be examined regarding the identity of all persons in the room during the testimony. Where possible, all persons in the room during the testimony should separately participate in the videoconference. In furtherance of their obligations under Illinois Rules of Professional Conduct 3.3 (Candor Toward the Tribunal), 3.4 (Fairness to Opposing Party and Counsel), and 8.4(d) (Misconduct), counsel representing a deponent should instruct the deponent that (a) he or she may not communicate with anyone during the examination other than the examining attorney or the court reporter and (b)he or she may not consult any written, printed, or electronic information during the examination other than information provided by the examining attorney. Unrepresented deponents may be similarly instructed by counsel for any party.

An attorney who produces a client or other witness for deposition without properly admonishing the witness along these lines may wind up with an ARDC beef if it develops that the witness had a coach or some other undisclosed crutch off camera.

Uh oh

Well, on the bright side, it's been six weeks since the last outage. That one was referred to as "challenges with [the] Case Management System." This one is an "integration outage."

Is that better... or worse?


------------------------------------------------

UPDATE:

"The integration issue has been resolved." Faster, I think, than the last time, too. Hopefully 'resolved' means you can efile again.....

The wildcat strike is over

Yes, I know there was no strike. The good folks in the Cook County Clerk of the Circuit Court's office did not engage in a job action.

But that's the effect of whatever "challenges" brought Odyssey down yesterday afternoon. (The Tyler Technologies email sounding the 'all clear' was time-stamped 9:44 p.m.)

Look... if this is a one-time hiccup, we'll all be fine. If this is a portent of things to come, however....

Transitions are tough. We are in a transition. But transitions are, by definition, transitory. We will come through this to the other side eventually. What will be there for us when we arrive? A bleak and desolate wasteland... or broad sunlit uplands?

This story will most definitely be continued....

Ooops. Cook County efiling system experiencing "challenges" this afternoon

What were they before?

Anyway, apparently the system has crashed entirely now.

Anyone in Cook County with a "hard" (jurisdictional) deadline today may wish to become familiar with Supreme Court Rules 9(d) and 10(d) forthwith.

Challenges... such an innocent-sounding word....

Illinois must reject efiling 'rejections'

Here in Cook County we are adrift this month on Odyssey's wine-dark sea. Those of us who have braved the new efiling system have experienced wildly divergent results. I had one filing take three attempts over six days, another done in one shot -- but it still took 55 hours -- and another that was turned around in just under 30 minutes.

That's some wild divergence. And, from Facebook and the ISBA online discussion groups, I know my experiences are not unique.

But -- assuming progress is being made in this department -- cutting down on the extreme turnaround times will not alone be sufficient to make efiling useful, or even palatable, to the bench and bar.

We must decisively reject any notion that efiling gives our Clerks of Court new powers to "reject" efilings.

The Illinois Clerk of Courts Act, 705 ILCS 105/0.01 et seq., specifies, in great detail, the duties and responsibilities of court clerks and the fees they may charge.

And it is clear that the General Assembly has made the Circuit Clerks into more than mere warehousemen. In addition to receiving and keeping records -- the core historic function of a Clerk of the Circuit Court -- the legislature has made the clerks responsible for the creation of various sorts of records, specifying, down to the bindings, what records to create and how these must be kept.

Nowhere in the Clerk of Courts Act, however, does the legislature make a clerk into a curator of everyday court records: They do not have the power to decide for themselves what to keep and what to reject.

And efiling changes nothing in this regard.

The creation of the court record is the responsibility of judges and lawyers (and unrepresented parties). The court clerk merely keeps that record, and stores it, making it available for further use by the trial court or for appellate review.

It is true that the most recent amendment to Illinois Supreme Court Rule 131 does refer to the power of a clerk to "reject" a document submitted for filing.

As of January 1, 2018, Supreme Court Rule 131 was renamed "Form of Documents" (from "Form of Papers"). The rule now provides:

(a) Legibility. All documents for filing and service shall be legibly written, typewritten, printed, or otherwise prepared. The clerk may reject any documents which do not conform to this rule.

(b) Titles. All documents shall be entitled in the court and cause, and the plaintiff’s name shall be placed first.

(c) Multiple Parties. In cases in which there are two or more plaintiffs or two or more defendants, it is sufficient in entitling documents, except a summons, to name the first-named plaintiff and the first-named defendant with the usual indication of other parties, provided there be added the official number of the cause.

(d) Name, Address, Telephone Number, and E-mail Address.

(1) Attorneys. All documents filed or served in any cause by an attorney upon another party shall bear the attorney’s name, business address, e-mail address, and telephone number. The attorney must designate a primary e-mail address and may designate no more than two secondary e-mail addresses.

(2) Unrepresented Parties. All documents filed or served in any cause by an unrepresented party upon another party shall bear the unrepresented party’s mailing address and telephone number. Additionally, an unrepresented party may designate a single e-mail address to which service may be directed under Rule 11. If an unrepresented party does not designate an e-mail address, then service upon and by that party must be made by a method specified in Rule 11 other than e-mail transmission.

According to the Supreme Court Rules, a circuit clerk may only "reject" a document which is illegible or otherwise fails to comply with the few specific requirements of Supreme Court Rule 131. And the clerk doesn't even have to do that; he or she "may" reject a non-conforming document.

Note, too, that attorneys are required to provide their name, address, telephone number and an email address on every document. No local attorney ID number is required. Therefore, no clerk has the power to reject a document because a local attorney ID number is omitted.

Yet, this was one of the bases on which the petitioner's notice of appeal was "rejected" by the Clerk of the Circuit Court of DuPage County in In re Marriage of Bordyn, 2018 IL App (2d) 180017-U (discussed more in this post).

The other asserted basis for "rejection" in Bordyn was that the notice of appeal and notice of filing of the notice of appeal were submitted as one document -- an "error" that Presiding Justice Donald C. Hudson noted, 2018 IL App (2d) 180017-U, ¶14, would probably have been rectified, in those carefree, innocent days prior to efiling, simply by pulling out the staple from the offending document and re-stapling it as two documents.

The Bordyn court agreed that the otherwise timely-filed notice of appeal was properly rejected because, under paragraph 3 of the Illinois Supreme Court's Electronic Filing Standards and Principles (as amended September 16, 2014), "Any electronic document or record submitted to the clerk of the court for filing shall be deemed filed if not rejected by the clerk." And paragraph 9(d), also relied upon, provides that, "Bulk filings of multiple cases or multiple documents combined into one PDF document... shall not be accepted." (2018 IL App (2d) 180017-U, ¶7.)

Standard 9(d) was incompletely quoted in Bordyn. The word "bulk" was omitted. Moreover, standard 9(d) further provided, "Documents with different civil or criminal case numbers must be filed individually in separate transactions." Well, of course! In the days before efiling, no attorney would hand over an undifferentiated mass of papers for the unrelated Smith, Jones, White, and Green cases and tell the counter clerk to figure it out for him- or herself. Nor would an attorney glob together her appearance, answer, and initial discovery requests all as one document. But all the attorney did in Bordyn was attempt to file his notice of appeal and proof of service of that notice as a single document.

Further, these 2014 "standards" generally refer to the voluntary efiling regime that the Illinois Supreme Court was then trying to encourage. These standards were referred to in the introductory paragraphs of the January 22, 2016 Order adopting a timetable for mandatory efiling across the state, but they were not adopted as rules. Rather, paragraph 9 of that Order provided, "The Supreme Court will adopt rules governing e-filing and e-service in accordance with the mandate schedule in this Order." Nor were these 2014 standards adopted as rules in the May 30, 2017 amendment to the mandatory efiling Order."

And, besides, nothing in these standards creates or confers any power on a clerk to reject a document; it merely states the obvious: that which is not rejected is accepted.

The Bordyn court also refers (2018 IL App (2) 180017-U, ¶7) paragraphs 7(d) and (f) of the Supreme Court's Electronic Filing Procedures and User Manual. But, of course, this is the manual for filing documents in the Supreme Court, not in DuPage County.

But let's look at the cited sections inasmuch as these may serve as templates for rules that may be adopted elsewhere. Section 7(d) provides, "An e-filed document submitted to the Clerk for filing shall be deemed filed upon review and acceptance by the Clerk. The filed document shall be endorsed with the clerk's electronic file mark setting forth, at a minimum, the identification of the Court, the Clerk, the date and the time of filing."

That provision gives no specific power to the Clerk of the Supreme Court; the objective evaluation that the Supreme Court Clerk may properly perform for, say, briefs submitted for filing in that court (e.g.left margins of 1.5", font sizes, brief cover colors, word counts) are already specified elsewhere in the Illinois Supreme Court Rules. Rather, the paragraph merely describes what consequences follow for a document that fails to conform to these objective filing requirements that the court -- not the clerk -- has set forth.

Paragraph 7(f) provides, "In the event the Clerk rejects a submitted document, the document will not be filed and the registered user will receive an electronic notification of the reason(s) for the rejection."

This provision gives no power to the Supreme Court Clerk to reject documents for any reason it wants; rather, it requires the Clerk, in the event she feels compelled to reject a document, to specify the reason -- and it is assumed, or should be, that the reason specified will be one specifically authorized by Supreme Court rule.

Now, I understand that one should not read too much into a Rule 23 Order like Bordyn. It will never be cited by any reviewing court addressing an efiling issue.

But it will have been read. As long as the case pops up in Lexis or Westlaw, at least until a body of published case law emerges, every trial or appellate court judge faced with an efiling issue, and all of their law clerks, will look at Bordyn.

And if one appellate panel was not inclined to critically examine the limitations placed on the circuit clerk's powers to "reject" documents submitted for efiling, others may be as well -- unless the bench and bar get together on this and make abundantly clear that efiling creates no new powers for circuit clerks. Circuit Clerks have limited powers to reject any proposed filings; specifically, they have only those powers granted by statute and by the Supreme Court Rules. We must reject efiling rejections.

Not sure about compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

Not a likely FWIW reader - even if he were real.

As you might expect, because For What It's Worth is published on the Internet, it is available around the Whole Wide World (which, I have recently learned, is not what "www" stands for).

Nevertheless, much as I'd like to imagine Horace Rumpole decompressing at Pomeroy's after a hard day jousting with the Mad Bull down at the Old Bailey, sipping a generous glass of Chateau Thames Embankment, and calling up FWIW on his smart phone... it seems very unlikely that this blog would have much appeal much beyond the borders of County Cook.

However, if Rumpole or anyone else in chambers at No. 2 Equity Court were to call up FWIW, it is my understanding that they'd get the exact same page you're looking at, but with this notice superimposed:

This site uses cookies from Google to deliver its services, to personalize ads and to analyze traffic. Information about your use of this site is shared with Google. By using this site, you agree to its use of cookies.

This blog is published by the Blogger service of Google, and Blogger slapped the above and foregoing notice on foreign incarnations of this blog without any exertion on my part. I dimly understand that this notice was added in order to comply with regulations imposed by the European Union.

I only recently figured out that the cookie notice is different, somehow, than the latest thing about which I'm getting frequent emails, viz., the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The one difference I can actually explain is that the cookie notice has been around for awhile now but GPDR is only going into effect this month.

Beyond that, although I have attempted to work through the jargon-laden verbiage of the 'explanatory' articles Google provides, I have had difficulty actually determining what, if anything, Google actually wants me to do in order to remain in the good graces of Brussels-based bureaucrats who have no interest whatsoever in the judicial aspirations of Cook County residents.

I have read that "GDPR introduces significant new obligations for the ecosystem," but I have no real understanding of what that means. I thought that 'ecosystem' referred to birds and bees and dirt and trees and other living things in a given area -- but I find that Dictionary.com offers an alternative definition of ecosystem as "any system or network of interconnecting and interacting parts, as in a business: The success of Apple’s ecosystem depends on hardware/software integration...."

I guess I am a content provider -- Google/Blogger wouldn't be able to collect any information about blog readers unless folks like me provide content -- and given how many millions of content providers exist, this probably makes me analogous to a bug hiding under a fallen leaf on the forest floor of the Google/Blogger ecosystem.

As near as I can tell, the following appears to be the key passage in the various materials I've gotten from Google about GDPR:

You are not required to seek consent for a user’s activity on Google’s sites (we obtain that ourselves when users visit our sites). We are asking only that you seek consent for your uses of our ads products on your properties. We already require that certain consents are obtained from your users in the EEA, and we are updating those requirements in line with the GDPR. We encourage you to link to this user-facing page explaining how Google manages data in its ads products. Doing so will meet the requirement of our EU User Consent Policy to give your users information about Google’s uses of their personal data.

Well, now I've linked. And I hope that's sufficient to keep me from getting stepped on.

Time will tell.

If you've had trouble recently with email to Yahoo! or AOL addresses, perhaps I can explain

Just over a week ago, on April 23, I found these two emails in my Yahoo! inbox (I've deleted links and images for obvious reasons, but here are the texts):

Dear Customer,

Access to e-mail is about to expire,
We recommend that you upgrade your account to avoid suspension.
Please open the attachment to update your account.

Thank You.
Yahoo Inc

While you may think the wording of this email a trifle awkward, it was a masterpiece compared with this gem:

Dear Valued user,

Your email account will be blocked in response to a complaint received by the administration.
According to provision 13.3 of Terms and Conditions, Yahoo may at any time, terminate its
Services for your account and all your data will be lost.
You have to upgrade now to the newest Yahoo! Mail to avoid this termination process.
Once your account is upgraded, we will restore your account to its normal state.Click here
[address deleted]

Kindly note that you have to perform this upgrade as soon as possible to avoid loosing your account data.

Thank You for Being A Loyal Yahoo! Mail User

We hope you enjoy the newest version of Yahoo! Mail.

Yahoo Mail Team
Copyright © 2014 Mail! Inc
Yahoo! Mail

I mean, seriously, who wants loose account data? Keep your data tight; that's what I say!

I dutifully marked these beauties as spam and consigned them to oblivion.

Other things weighed more heavily on my mind that Wednesday. I was in Indianapolis, with my wife and my daughter Brigid, because my other daughter Katie had just given birth to our second grandchild.

(Thank you.)

My wife and Brigid were the front-line troops, assisting Katie. I was either providing logistical support or a camp follower, depending on whether I had an assignment at any given time. Either way, back in the rear echelons, I had some time to remain at least in tenuous communication with pending matters via email on my smart phone.

My efforts met with decidedly mixed results.

Several emails bounced back, marked "undeliverable." I was not then inclined to investigate the causes; I was willing to accept any number of excuses.

I was willing, for example, to put it down to some fault of my own in emailing from a smart phone. (I'm still a smart phone newbie. I was reluctant, for many years, to acquire an inanimate object that was demonstrably smarter than me. I may or may not have gotten angry when I was told that, if this was indeed my objection, I should also give up my tables and chairs.)

I speculated that the wireless connection might be shaky in the hospital. (I seem to recall a time when using mobile phones in hospitals was strictly verboten, supposedly because it might possibly make Mr. Jones' pacemaker in Room 319 do the St. Vitus' dance. It was only after every doctor, then every nurse, then every technician, food server, and maintenance person, began using their phones in an open and notorious manner in every corner of every hospital -- flouting their telephony in front of patients and visitors alike -- all without any apparent harm to Mr. Jones -- that the signs forbidding cellphone use were finally, and perhaps somewhat sheepishly, retired.)

I was even willing to accept that my problem was that I was in a foreign city, and that things would improve when I returned to Sweet Home Chicago.

And it seemed, at first, that this was the case. Another matter had jumped to the top of the priority list in my absence and all my email traffic on that matter successfully traversed the highways and byways of the Intertubes.

But when that crisis subsided, at least for the time being, I had an urgent need to return to the other matter -- and all my email problems returned. Even though I was safely back in Chicago. In my office or at home, not in a hospital. Using a desktop, not a smartphone.

It was time to stop making excuses and start investigating the problem.

Humans are supposed to be adept at pattern recognition.  I'm supposed to be human.  So I did my best: I eventually realized that I was having problems sending to Yahoo! Mail addresses. A lot of solo practitioners use Yahoo! Mail: It's free, it's easy to use, it's been around for awhile. I use a Yahoo! address for email to this blog. Oddly enough, I was getting email at that address even while I found it impossible to send emails to Yahoo! addresses.

In one case, the person I was trying to email had a personal AOL address; I tried sending to that address as well, but it also bounced back.

I know about AOL addresses. Yes, I'm old. I'm so old I remember when America On Line was state-of-the-art. I've used an AOL address for business emails for decades. It's been sort of a constant for me: I've had several offices since 1998, and every time I've moved I've had to change phone numbers (one time I moved literally across the street and around the corner and the phone company still decreed that this was somehow 'too far' to take my phone number). Every time I've changed phone numbers -- even with paying the extra fee for call forwarding the from the old number -- I feel as though I've lost business. But the AOL address has remained the same.

But I have changed, somewhat, with the times. Back in 2007, when my oldest son John was about to graduate from the University of Notre Dame with a degree in computer engineering, he decided to set me up in Gmail. Email would still go to my AOL address but be 'swept' into the shiny, new Gmail account. When I sent mail it would appear to come from my trusty AOL account.

This system has worked well for me for seven years. Until last week.

In calling colleagues to set up work-arounds with attorneys having Yahoo! addresses, I discovered that many of my fellow lawyers were having troubles, too -- not necessarily in sending emails out, but in opening attachments that they did receive.

Frustrated, I reached out again to my son John, now a technical architect (whatever that is) with Accenture. It took him less than five minutes to find and send me an April 25 article posted on ZDNet, "AOL, Yahoo email problems show limits of email security." I read the author's explanation of "DMARC" several times with little or no comprehension. The part that I think I understand is reproduced below:

Perhaps out of frustration with all the phishing and other abuse using their domains, both AOL and Yahoo have recently published DMARC policies to reject email purportedly from: their domains which fails DMARC tests. The problem with this is that lots of legitimate email fails DMARC tests, the most prominent example being mailing lists. Lists commonly modify various headers in when sending content out, so when a message from: an AOL or Yahoo user goes to a mailing list, and the mail server for recipients of the message checks DMARC, it will reject the message and send a bounce.

* * * The policy blocks a lot of spam, but a lot of legit mail in the process. AOL and Yahoo so far are suggesting that everyone change the way they have always done things in order to work within the new restrictions.

John tried to explain to me that -- after seven years -- Yahoo! and AOL had suddenly decided that email sent from my AOL address, via my Gmail account, to any Yahoo! or AOL address, would now be marked for rejection as likely spam. Sure enough, a couple of days later, I received a lengthy email from AOL which read, in pertinent part,

Recently, our systems alerted us to an increased incidence of email users receiving spam emails from "spoofed" AOL email addresses. AOL's security team immediately began investigating the cause of the spoofed emails. Spoofing is a tactic used by spammers to make it appear that the message is from you in order to trick the recipient into opening it. These emails do not originate from the AOL Mail system – the addresses are just edited to make them appear that way.

So because my business emails don't "originate from the AOL Mail system," but only "appear that way," I am now a "spoofer."

So here is how matters now stand: AOL and Yahoo! have invented an email system that eliminates all the business email and lets through only the spam.

Too harsh?

Here's an email I found in my Yahoo! inbox just this morning (not in the spam filter, in the inbox):

Yahoo Mail©
To Me

Account Information

ACCOUNT ALERT,

Your Account is about to expire

Click here to renew

Thank you for helping us protect you.

Yahoo! Membership Service