- EMAIL, SPAM and PHISHING

E-Mail - While we all get infected from time to time (even systems that travel in the best circles do...) there are some pretty basic steps to minimize the risk.
As a general rule don't open attachments unless you know who sent it and in some cases even then its questionable as some contain viruses and others contain not a virus but a virus hoax that don't do any real damage but wastes our time and effort nonetheless.

Next check your anti virus programme to make sure its' e-mail scanner is turned on. Frequently its off, especially if you are on a dial up connection because it sometimes causes headaches when downloading your mail and your email programme times out. That means it gets turned off. The problem is, sometimes it doesn't get turned back on. If you decide that you DO want to open the attachment labeled "Aunt Martha's Birthday then make a copy of the file and manually run your virus check on it first.

Spam - Meanwhile, one of the most annoying aspects of email may well be the increasing number of unwanted messages you get every day. This problem is close to epidemic with even home users facing the daunting prospect of hours of work wading through dozens or even hundreds of spam a day. In the corporate world its even worse with some estimates suggesting the problem cost 50 billion dollars globally back in 2005 and the situation doesn't seem to be improving much. For interest sake, Canada's total was somewhere around 1.6 billion and in the U.S. it was close to 17. The bottom line here is that not only is spam annoying but its expensive too, especially if you are in business.

So what do we do?

Well there are some fairly effective tools for minimizing (you'll never actually eliminate them) the number of messages that make their way to your inbox. One of the simplest won't cost you a cent.

Set up a 'utility' email account. One that you can use when you get to those web-pages and services that simply won't work unless you have a working email account. There are lots of them, Windows Live (Hotmail), Google (Gmail), Yahoo, and AOL (AIM) to name just a few. The idea here is that if your email address finds its way to the spammers (and it will) at least you can filter out the junk without cluttering up your system or your email client (Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, et al). That leaves your regular email address (usually courtesy of your internet provider) pretty much spam free as long as you only give it to people you trust.

Then there are a variety of so called spam filters, eliminators and killers. Your internet provider almost certainly uses one but sometimes its too effective and can send legitimate messages into the "Junk Mail" folder for future deletion. Remember, it doesn't have a copy of your address book and can't always tell the difference between Aunt Martha's message and the latest ad for cheap prescriptions, knock off watches or announcements you've won a non-existent lottery somewhere in Europe. So that means there's usually some work to do at the local level.

You can do that with a utility designed to catch the spammers when they do manage to get through. A search for spam utilities reveals dozens of choices, some free, some paid. These include Spamfighter, Mailwasher, Spamcatcher and others. We've looked at some of them but which ones are best, we'll leave up to you. That said though, the ones mentioned earlier are the most popular and you'll find links to them on our security tools page. (See the link below)

Finally, no matter which tool you use make sure you have the latest version to ensure the most effective protection and remember they have to be trained and except for some well known spam which is automatically deleted, you'll still have to go through the motions with some messages. The plus here though, is that you'll only have to do it once.

Phishing -

This is a specialized type of spam that in a word is outright fraud. The messages are designed to trick you into revealing confidential information including usernames, passwords, credit card information to an unknown 3rd party. Most common are messages that pretend to be from legitimate institutions like banks, trust companies and other institutions such as retailers, Ebay, AOL or Paypal.

These attempts to steal your information frequently come in the form of a request to verify usernames, account numbers and/or passwords and usually include a threat to close or suspend your account if you don't comply.

What's important to remember is that no reputable company will ask you for such information and have elaborate safeguards in place to make sure that your personal data isn't revealed to anyone, even the employees of that particular bank or company.

If you happen to get one of these requests ignore it and delete the message without opening it. We also suggest that you report the attempt to organizations like

www.phonebusters.com in Canada

or reportphising@antiphishing.org and spam@uce.gov in the United States.

Here's the link to some of the programmes we mentioned -

- THE TOOLS

Note. . . These suggestions come without any type of guarantee or claim.

Remember, you are you own best source of security.

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