Email Safe

People With No Life

For some reason which I don't understand, there are actually lots of people out there who like to waste other people's time. I mean, I really can't imagine why some losers would actually take the time to make up some chain email. What satisfaction do they get from it? Are they really that lonely that the only way to make human contact is to trick people into wasting their time? I find that maintaining a web page does the trick.

More Than Just Annoying...

Anyways, sometimes these chain letters can be more harmful than just a waste of time. Virus hoaxes can lead people to ignore real viruses, fake fundraisers can steal your money, responding to spam can put your email on a CD of active email addresses which will be sold for profit... and the list, I'm sure, goes on.

Real Viruses

This, unfortunately, is a topic I have little knowledge about. However, that says something in itself, doesn't it? Here are a few basic rules I follow that are good for prevention.

• Make sure you have anti-virus software, and that you keep it updated to the latest version. I use McAfee VirusScan.
• I don't use Outlook. It's really best if you can use some kind of secure shell to read your email right off another server. I'll post more info for the more computer-illiterate as soon as I can locate some.
• Never download attachments unless you have actual verbal verification from the person who sent them to you. As everyone is probably aware by now, some viruses send out emails to every entry in the host's address book.
• You get an email from someone you know with a subject heading they would never write, like, "Here are those pictures you wanted," when you didn't ask anyone for any pictures, or, "This is REALLY important! :)" when no one really writes subjects like that. It's weird how peoples' curiosity will make them look at things that are obviously not realistic. Don't open emails with sketchy subjects until you verify them!

Virus Hoaxes

Now we're getting into the fun stuff. These are the things people fall for more than anything else. Whenever you get an email from someone claiming to beware of a new virus and to "forward this to everyone you know ASAP!" chances are it is a hoax. Before you go making all your friends mad at you, go to McAfee's hoax page for a complete list of current hoaxes, and see if yours is on there. Some of them are actually pretty funny too. Here is a list of warning signs that your virus warning may be a hoax.

• It claims to be from IBM or Microsoft. They do not send out mass emails with the intent of forwarding them around the globe.
• It contains multiple misspelled words or bad grammar. Most of these losers spend so much time on the computer, they are practically English illiterate.
• It says the virus is "incurable," or it "attaches itself to such-and-such a file," or something a little too imaginary. Remember, a computer virus is not actually a real virus. It isn't alive, and it doesn't jump around inside your computer and eat things. It's only a program that may delete important files or send emails containing copies of itself. A computer is not a human. There are no such things as incurable computer viruses. People did not invent and build the human body, so unlike computers, there are things about it we still do not understand.
• It says, "Forward this to everyone you know ASAP!!" Doesn't that just sound a little too anxious?
• It says "This virus has just recently been discovered and not many people know about it yet." Right. How gullible are you? How convenient that no web sites you look at will have any information on it. Trust me, the odds that you will get a virus before someone has posted something on it are slim to none. Usually the hoax is already up on McAfee.
• It tells you to delete a file on your computer. You, the regular joe who thinks a computer is a box with a screen, do not know what the file SLCBRG in your Windows/commands folder does. There are tons of files with names like that which you were never meant to see. If an email claims that one of these files is a virus, it is most likely trying to trick you into being a virus yourself, i.e. deleting important files on your computer manually. Man, you would have to feel pretty stupid then.
• It says, "So-and-so announced this on their web site." If it's a reliable source, go check out the website for yourself. Either it will be real, there will be a notice saying "We never said this," or there will be nothing there, in which case you should go to McAfee and verify that it is, indeed, a hoax.

Chain Letters

There are two different types of chain letters, so I'll address both.
1. "Send this to 50 people in 5 minutes or you will never be loved." - I'm not even going to say anything about this. There is no such thing as being jynxed by a chain letter. If you even believe in that stuff, you should go jump off a cliff. Some letters will give examples of people who didn't send the letter, and, while funny, they are obviously made up. If you are still superstitious, I give myself as an example. I always delete those or report them to SpamCop, and I am happy and successful.
2. "Didn't you like this cute story about saving puppies from animal shelters? You have a choice: be an evil satanist and delete this email, thereby condemning all puppies to hell, or forward this to everyone you know and help save the puppies!!" Don't give in to the guilt trip. Odds are, this email was only created to flood inboxes. Nobody is going to do anything about the puppies. Even worse is when it's a poem about love, or friendship, or Jesus, or having pride in America. That is not the kind of thing you forward!!

Spam

There's a lot of confusion about spam. Most people don't know what's illegal and what isn't, and the worst thing you can do is listen to the spammers when they tell you they're doing something legal!

Basically, a piece of mail is considered spam, and is therefore illegal, if it is trying to sell you something, or make you a paying member of something (same thing really), and you did not sign up to recieve it. You have to be careful of these, because many times, you will have signed up for some internet service, and on the application they have a box that says, "Yes! Send me tons of unwanted information about stupid crap I don't want to know" and it will be checked already. You don't notice it, so you don't uncheck it, and you click 'Submit,' and BOOM! Now this piece of mail isn't spam, because they got your email from whatever company's form you filled out.

You may be sure it's not something you signed up for. For example, I often get mails from women with porn-starish names like "Jennifer" or "Tina" (no offense to people with those names, but my point is it's not going to be like "Edna" or something) asking me to become a member of some porn site with hundreds of live video feeds of urinating 18-year-old asian girls or some other things that I think would really only appeal to people with severe sexual disorders. In this case, (unless you've handed your email address out at porn sites, in which case click here) you can be pretty sure that they got your email through some underhanded dealings, and you can report them at SpamCop. There's plenty of good info on spam there, too, but I assume you have more fun reading it here. They can tend to be kind of sparse with the jokes.

One of the most important things to remember when dealing with spam is not to reply to it. Usually what they do is check to see if your email address is active, i.e. there is still someone actively checking it. If they don't get a reply, they assume that it is some account that has been abandoned. I know some people with several of these, from various places such as hotmail.com, lycosmail.com, somethingcutethatyouwouldn'texpecttobeamailserver.com, howcuteit'smyname.com, and others. So say you reply saying "remove me from your list," what they do is take your email, put in on a CD, and sell it to spammers.

Some places say that if they include a means for you to unsubscribe, then it is not illegal. While I'm not totally sure about this, it seems like a bunch of crap to me, and I'd report them to SpamCop anyway. The worst that can happen is you'll get a reply from SpamCop saying they check out okay. Also, there's some software you can download, like MailWasher that allows you to bounce spam. The email software you use may even do this already. All you have to do is bounce back spam, and it'll look like your email address doesn't even exist anymore.