The trouble is the "baggage" that it comes with... some of it right up there with what we're used to with snail mail, some unique to this new medium. How can I dump the spam, as electronic junk mail is called? How can I insulate myself from objectionable material?
And, the one we've all learned to dread... how can I protect my computer from all the nasty stuff disguised as ordinary messages?
There's a lot we can all do to improve things for ourselves and our systems. Some are simple, some are a bit complicated but worth the time and effort.
Spam pushes a button on all of us and there is one golden rule to remember here. Never, ever respond to junk mail, not even to say "don't send me any more." All that achieves is that the sender gets confirmation of your E-mail address and it's on their list for evermore. Even worse, they will try and sell it to somebody else.
Most people tend to use the E-Mail program that comes with their browser. Internet Explorer gives you Outlook Express and Netscape comes with Messenger. Both are fully featured, rather large, and each in it's own way allows you to set filters to block mail from particular senders. Most web based programs have the same feature... our Suitemail included.
It's very well published that almost all E-mail virus problems and dangers are associated with attachments hooked onto messages and the golden rule here is never open an attachment, once it's been downloaded, unless you know what it is and who it's from. Me, I hate receiving large attachments that I'm not expecting anyway because they take forever to download.
As with most things there's a way round this. Delete unwanted attachments from messages before downloading the message itself.
"RemoteMail32 is a POP3 Remote Mail Client that allows you to rid your mailbox on your ISP's server of large attachments, without having to download all of the mail. A simple but handy tool."
Taking this principle a stage further I use a small E-mail checker that looks for incoming mail every five minutes... or whatever interval I set. It sits in my tray area beside the clock and waves at me when mail has arrived. In addition, it allows me to see who the message is from, how big it is, and I can delete it from the server if that's what it deserves.
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