If you’ve ever had an email address and have given that email address to family members and friends, then you’ve been the victim of FW: otherwise know as a email forward, chain letter, or some funny video, story, joke, etc. These type of emails are some of the worst emails to perpetuate, for a number of reasons.

Unless you believe that being gullible is a good thing and you want everyone you know to also believe anything anyone will say, then go ahead and continue passing on those emails to 10, 20, 100, or a million people so that your wildest dreams will come true, or so that you won’t have every single bad thing possible in the world happen to you…hey, it’s what the email said, right? (FW: Cute Story, Pass it on to 1 Billion People in the next 5 minutes OR ELSE!!!)

So you may ask, why are these emails sent so often? Is it just because someone something interesting to share and it continues to be perpetuated? No, I’m afraid not, if you believe that, you’re skating towards the gullible crowd.

Email like this and others are ultimately generated and sent out by spammers for one of two general purposes. First, to harvest new email addresses for spamming. and second, to clog email systems all over the world.

Spammers don’t make money from people buying the products advertised in the spam email. Spammers usually aren’t the one selling the products. Spammers are hired by shady companies to deliver the company’s advertisement to the greatest number of people possible. The spammer is then paid by the company per number of successful email deliveries of the advertisement.

So ask yourself, if a spammer had to get a very large number of VALID and ACTIVE email addresses (remember, they only get paid if the spam email is safely delivered to an email address, rejected emails don’t count), how would you go about it? Searching online? Too time consuming. Randomly guessing email addresses? Not guaranteed to get active email addresses. Email forwards are a spammers dream. In any given email forward, you can find anywhere from 25 to hundreds of valid and active email addresses, and they are guaranteed because when you forward it to your friends and they send it on to their friends, it perpetuates this cycle of sending the forward to valid email addresses.

Every time a forward is sent, the previous email addresses specified in the email are sent in the message so after a couple of rounds you find the joke or story of the email at the bottom of the message after scrolling through hundreds of email addresses.

Now imagine this giant email message being sent to 25-100 people everytime you forward and copy your entire hotmail or yahoo address book. Then each of those individuals does the same. After a couple of rounds, the giant message is being delivered to thousands and thousands of email inboxes all over the world. As a one time email administrator, I can assure you that email servers don’t like giant messages, they don’t work well and bog down the mail delivery process. Another sick pleasure of spammers and other Web sadists, to cause as many problems for servers and administrators all over the world.

So next time you get one of these messages, please don’t forward it. Trust me, you won’t get that $10. And if you really want to read some funny jokes and cute stories, that’s what search engines are for, just search: “cute story” or “funny jokes”. You’ll get much more than you would from that email. Then, reply to the person who sent you the forwarded message and kindly ask them to never include your email address in another message like that because it’s just a way for spammers to gain access to your email address. Hopefully they will respect your wishes and will be sure to never do it again. If all else fails, create a brand new email address and don’t share it with anyone, that’s always a safe bet.

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In the interests of full disclosure, I didn’t come up with this idea. I read about it in a computer magazine a year or two back but of course when I wanted to refer to it for this article, I couldn’t find it! But someone on Digg eventually managed to find it so here is the original article if you want to see it.As email providers give away more and more storage space, more and more personal information is being stored in those accounts. People are increasingly using their email accounts for more than just email – it has become their online document storage area with backup documents such as passwords, bank account numbers, account usernames, scans of correspondence and much more. Even if you don’t use your email for this purpose, you may still be inadvertantly revealing personal information in general conversation emails to family and close friends. A 6GB Gmail account or an unlimited space Yahoo account is potentially an information bonanza source for identity thieves who manage to figure out your email password and then go snooping. But if someone HAS cracked your email password, it may not be apparent to you. A snooper can easily read an email then mark it as unread again. So the best thing to do would be to set up an “electronic tripwire” so if someone breaks into your account, you’ll know about it.

Here’s how to do it :

1. Sign up for a website hit counter at www.onestatfree.com. You can leave a fake name and whatever URL you want (I used Google.com for mine).

2. You will then receive a welcome email from OneStat with a text attachment called OneStatScript.txt. Download this attachment to your computer and then delete the email (you don’t want any email snoopers finding it later). But before deleting the email, write down your OneStat account number as you will need it later.

3. Change the name of the text document to something that will make the email snooper salivate such as passwordlist. Also change the file format from a text document to a website page. So make it something like passwordlist.htm.

4. Email this newly-renamed file as an attachment to the email account you want to monitor. Make sure the email subject title also lures the snooper in (maybe something like List of Passwords. You get the idea .

5. The trap is now set. Basically if someone opens the email and opens the attachment, OneStat will record a hit. If you then log into your OneStat account say once a day, you will see how many hits you have had to your

The OneStat account page then gives you details on each “visitor” including the date and time they accessed the web document and more importantly their location and IP address! So how does having this information help you? Well first of all, it will alert you to change your password to something stronger. Secondly, if you see the snooper’s location and you only know one or two people there then it narrows down your list of potential suspects. By the way, I recommended signing up for One Stat because the author of the original idea mentioned them. But if you know of any other hit counter services that send text documents to your email address, then please mention them in the comments. I don’t have any financial advantage recommending One Stat so I am perfectly happy to consider alternative companies. (By) Mark O’Neill is a blogger, writer and English tutor. Check out his blog at BetterThanTherapy.net

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With the huge number of things we can do today from our computers and laptops, a computer users worst fear is that someone has illegally accessed their computer and has access to their files and their information. With online banking, E-Bay, and other online shopping, our computers now store an immense amount of sensitive financial and personal information. The last thing any user would want is that information floating around the Internet to be used by others online. The number of identity theft crimes reported is growing exponentially and it can be stopped by users practicing safe computer and Internet usage.

One of the most key items any computer user should have installed on their computer is a software firewall. Most users will have at least some form of anti-virus, and maybe some anti-spyware software, but most users lack a software firewall. A firewall is one of the most important things you can have installed on your computer because it is your last line of defense against intruders on your computer.

Let’s face it, users are going to download music, and other things online so just advising users to not download items that they know they can trust is not feasible. People are going to download music, free programs and more. Files are going to come into the average computer users computer regardless of what security experts advice. It’s like saying that if you just cover up your mouth and never breath, then you won’t catch a cold. That’ s just not going to happen. You are going to go outside sometime and be around other people, and it is inevitable that you will catch a cold. Likewise, users will download files and a malicious file will at some point enter a users computer/

Once a malicious file is in, it’s up to that computer’s safety programs to protect the user. Many of the malicious programs out there are going to try and hang around the computer until important information is entered into a form on the Internet and once the user types in the information, the bad program takes a copy of it and tries to send it back to the owner of the bad program. All of this, obviously, without the user knowing. These programs will attempt to send the information back through non-standard ports on the computer, ports that can be blocked by a good firewall program.

Now, don’t just rush out there and buy some $60-$100 firewall security program at your local computer store. There are alternatives that will secure your computer for free. I recommend using Zone Alarm. It is 100% free and can be downloaded for free from download.com here: ZoneAlarm.

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