Email Safety

You shouldn't be able to get a virus just from reading or previewing an e-mail, but because e-mail programs now allow HTML and scripting (so your e-mails can look as pretty as a webpage), it's possible (which is why you may have heard the advice to turn off your preview pane).

To eliminate this threat, turn off all html and scripting. Your e-mails might not look as pretty, but it will prevent most (if not all) viruses that spread just by reading/opening/previewing an e-mail.

The steps for actually doing so will vary from program to program. If you're lucky, your program does this automatically (for example, the Windows Live Hotmail now blocks this content by default). If not, since there are so many programs and variations, the best advice I can give is to wander around in your options/settings or do a Google search on "Turn off html in X" where X is your e-mail program or service.

Ok, I don't really mean never, but be very cautious. Attachments from strangers are sure to be trouble so just ignore them. However, attachments from people you know aren't guaranteed to be safe either.

When a virus hits someone, it can go through their address book and send itself to everyone they know (which may include you). That means that when you get the virus, it will have actually come from the computer of someone you know.

An advanced virus will either copy the contents of a previous e-mail or combine words from several to sound like a real e-mail (which will hopefully trick you into thinking your friend/family member actually sent it).

The best advice for dealing with attachments is to treat every one as an unmarked package.
Unless you are absolutely sure that the attachment is safe, don't open it! Call the sender and find out what it is and why it's there.

Links can be dangerous if they lead you to a website that looks like your bank when it isn't (which is called a phishing attack and is described below). They can also take you to a webpage where a hacker has left attack code that will launch when you try to view the page.

This is the same scenario as sending a virus to you in an e-mail except that most people don't expect it and spam and virus filters on e-mail programs can't stop viruses that launch through your web browser.

The best advice I can give you is to treat links in an e-mail like attachments. Assume the e-mail is fake and the links are bait.

If you took my advice to turn off HTML and scripting to reduce virus threat, the option for turning off images should be nearby.

The main point here is that spammers use images to defeat spam filters (which aren't able to "see" what's in an image the same way we do). Worse than that, when an image loads in your e-mail, the spammer or company who sent it has a record that you accessed the image. This is bad for several reasons:

• This tells them that your e-mail address is valid.
• They know that whatever trick they used to make you think it was a real e-mail is working.
• They can use the records of the image access to prove to whoever is paying them that people have seen the ad. Don't support the Spammers by letting them get paid!

For all these reasons, turn of images in your e-mail. You can always allow exceptions on a case-by-case basis for regular monthly newsletters or pictures from your family.

Have you ever seen one of these:

Wow! Look at all those names!

The problem here is that everyone who receives this e-mail will also see everyone else's e-mail address and name. Why violate the privacy of your friends and family this way?

Put your own e-mail address in the "To:" field and take that giant list of people and put it in the blind carbon copy (BCC) field. Now when you send it, everyone will still get the e-mail, but the only address they will see is yours. And since they already know who you are, you're not giving away any private information to anyone.

Here's a chain e-mail that has gathered quite a few e-mail addresses along the way:

The further it goes, the more e-mails it collects

If you're going to forward an e-mail, make sure you actually delete all the e-mails from the top and bottom before you do. Not only are you preventing your e-mail (and the e-mails of everyone else on the list) from being sent to who knows who, but it makes the content of the e-mail much faster and easier to find.

One note: before you forward a chain e-mail, check Snopes to make sure it's not a prank/hoax.

During my graduate research into Spam (yes, I honestly did graduate research on Spam), I discovered that the most effective way to prevent Spam is to make sure your e-mail address isn't listed on webpages.
It turns out that Spammers use programs (called robots) to search the Internet for e-mail addresses. This is really easy to do if someone just leaves their e-mail on their website without any protection as in this case from the University of Idaho:

University of Idaho web directory

Every member of the faculty and every student is listed here with all their data (including e-mail). Spamming them will be cake.

If you want your e-mail on a website, use some trick to defeat the robots. Here are some examples:

If you click a link in a Spam message, you're telling them that Spam is working (and confirming your e-mail address as well). Once again, they can prove to the scum company that's paying them that their ad has been seen.

Worst case scenario, if you actually buy anything as a result of a Spam message, you are supporting the problem. Spam messages need to be fully ignored if they're ever going to die out! Even if you see a product you actually want, find somewhere else online to get it. Chances are that any company that advertises with Spam is bogus or at least terrible anyway.

A fake e-mail that looks like it's from a bank

The best rule of thumb is to never trust anything that is sent to you from a bank or financial service (including things like PayPal or eBay). If you're not sure, go ahead and open the e-mail (you did turn of scripting, HTML and images right?), and see what it has to say.

If it's any kind of bad news, be highly skeptical.

A fraud website that looks authentic

Whether you click it or just cut and paste it, it's the same result. If you don't want trouble, don't click links in e-mails. Go directly to the site in question by typing their address in the address bar or, better yet, type their name into your favorite search engine. That way, even if you misspell the name, the search engine will correct it and you should see the site or service you want listed as the first or second result.

This tip is especially important in light of the recent phishing attacks using e-card services.

One trick that a phisher can try is to register a domain name that's a common misspelling of a popular site. Then all they have to do is make a realistic copy of the site and fool you into providing your name and password (basically just like the "links in e-mails" problem).

Recently, the worst that usually happens with misspellings is that you will find a site full of ads instead of what you expected. But there are other results that can be quite shocking. If you find that this is something that happens to you often because you type fast or spell badly, try this tip:

Instead of typing a web site name in the address bar, type it into your search engine instead. The search engine will correct your spelling and show the real business or site that you're looking in the first few links.

Avoid misspelled site issues with the search engine trick