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From Donboy

Email is a great tool that is currently under attack by the dark side of humanity. I can not imagine using email without taking precautions. The problems with email are in three areas viruses, scams and spam.
Viruses


  • The number one reason viruses are increasing is because there is money in them. The person who infects your machine will sell your computer time to someone else who will use it to spam, broadcast more viruses or once in a while just for the computer time.
  • The first thing I did to stop email viruses was in 1998 when I stopped using Outlook. I started using Netscape for email and now I am using Mozilla (I have not gotten an email virus yet and I think not using Outlook is the main reason). Mozilla has a filter that I can use to trap most of my spam with so life is good.
  • A long time ago, I stopped looking at any email that had an attachment if I did not like the look of the subject line (you can hide who it is from or your best friend can get a virus on his computer so you can not go by the return address). Be warned that Outlook can open attachments for you and the default settings MUST be changed or the automatic attachment open can cause you to get a virus before you can delete the message. You can buy after market tools that will filter your email to find viruses on Outlook but I would think that any program that causes so much trouble should be replaced. Outlook is garbage and how Microsoft can sell it really puzzles me. The only software product from Microsoft has that is worse is their Exchange email server, I would have to be at death's door before I would try to administer something that bad. Just to be fair one of the best products that Microsoft has is Access (I expect them to fix that some day but they are to late, I already have a replacement tool).
  • Being human is also a great way to get a virus. Often a free utility or porn will be offered as the bait in an email and when you take the bait you might get a whole collection viruses at once. Just be careful where you get your free software from and that means you need to do your research before you download software. You can also get spyware this way.
Spam


  • The main thing I do to control spam is to use a free email account to give out as my email address when I sign up for something. Most of my spam ends up in this account so it seems that people that have a reason to ask for your address are a source of spam. The other major source of spam is people who have your address on their computer and get a virus. In my case this has not been much of a problem yet because I use my primary address only for business and most people in business take steps to stop or avoid viruses.
  • I hope you NEVER buy anything that comes to you as spam. Also never respond to spam even to tell them to stop because all that does is increases the spam you get because the spammer knows it is a good address.
  • You can use a spam filter and your ISP can be expected to have a filter of their own. This is great because it cuts down the amount of spam but it also means that you can have valid emails filtered out. You can not currently expect an email will get to the person you sent it to. As spam becomes more and more of a problem for ISPs you can expect the problems with valid email getting filtered out to grow. I expect we will end up with "white lists" where the only email you can get is from addresses that you entered as valid sources (people will have to call you before they can send you an email).
Scams


  • We do all the technology things to manage our email and we still have problems with email because we are human.
  • The rules are simple. Like any other source of offers, if the offer that comes in an email sounds to good to be true, you can expect that it is a scam. If you get an email with a link to go to a web site and enter private information, you can expect it is a scam. If you do get a message to "fix" account information, get out of email and type the URL into your browser to go to the site directly because they might have a dummy site setup that looks like the real thing to get your account information. If you are not sure what is going on, call them before you give out account information.
  • If you get an offer from outside your country, just don't take it.
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