Colombians use internet differently than the average American or European does. Unlike in first world countries, people in Colombia at home hardly have access to broadband internet and its huge amount of porn. So, as a friendly favor, they send their friends the latest of homemade photos of naked girls.
As a gringo you may find it embarrassing to receive mails of what seem to be 100% amateur porn, made by some guy to show off his girlfriend or how he did somebody else’s girlfriend. In most gringo cultures porn is consumed privately and shared anonymously.
What you may find even more disturbing is that in some cases the mails reveal the names, universities and even cities of the girls. Obviously you don’t know if these girls really have that name, attend that university and live in that city, but imagine the possible consequences for the ‘vieja’.
Good news for the girls is that, despite a booming growth of internet use, most Colombian parents, aunts, uncles and neighbors do not use msn and do not spend time in internet cafes going through their clogged up hotmail inboxes. You do not want to imagine what happens if the photos of the girl posing audaciously or blatantly showing she has long lost her virginity ends up in the hands of family members or worse, the priest.
Assuming you do not want to contribute to the increase of risk the girl’s nudity and photographed sexual activity ends up in the wrong hands, you simply do not forward the mails. Trying not to receive the mails is a lot more complicated though.
Asking your friend not to send you mails like that generally doesn’t work, since Colombia’s beauty simply is forwarded “to all”. A slightly more effective way is to ask your friend to remove you from his contact list, even though you may risk offending your friend.
The only real solution is to stick to Gmail or Yahoo for the mails you actually want to read and keep your msn account merely for messaging. You will need to accept that daily or weekly you just have to delete the bulk of amateur porn and power point presentations about true love and everlasting friendship, but at least you keep your concience clear and avoid the risk of seeing your own next door neighbour’s little girl portayed in a way that will be hard to forget.