How to avoid spam and computer viruses

One of the most popular pages on about-the-web.com is aboutavoiding scams, hoaxes and urban legends on the Internet

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Here are a few ways to avoid some of the perils associated with beingconnected to the rest of the world.

As a general rule of thumb, beware of any offer that soundstoo good to be true. This applies to products being offeredon the Internet and especially to any unsolicited offer orspam you receive in your email. Many of these are scams.

The term "computer spam", in case you don't know, refers to anyunsolicited bulk email. If it's not addressed to you, oryou don't recognize the sender, or you're being asked tobuy something or pass along questionable information, thenthat's spam. My advise is to "can the spam" by immediatelydeleting any email you receive from anyone you don't know.

The best way to avoid spam, is to be very careful about whoyou give your email address to. My advise here is to set upa free email account and to give this email address toanyone you don't absolutely trust with your personalinformation. It almost never does any good to fight backagainst spam. Your best course of action is just to deleteany unwanted email.

A trick that has been pretty successful for me is to set upan email rule (or filter) that automatically sends any mailnot addressed to me to a special folder. Most of this isspam and can be easily disposed of.

In addition to computer spam and computer scams, the other thing to watchout for on the Internet is hoaxes, urban legends and falseinformation. There are many of these floating around theInternet these days. Beware of any email that asks you tosend money for any cause, or to forward the email to allyour friends. Almost all of these are hoaxes. An excellentresource for information on hoaxes, urban legends and falseinformation is

urban legends

Another category of hoaxes involves virus warnings. If youreceive information that indicates you can get a computervirus from doing anything except opening an emailattachment or running an application, then this is probablyfalse information.

Most computer viruses are spread by users opening emailattachments that contain the virus. NEVER OPEN AN EMAILATTACHMENT THAT YOU ARE NOT EXPECTING. Even if you knowthe sender, make sure the attachment is legitimate beforeopening it. It is much safer to delete any questionableattachments and ask the sender to resend them than toassume that the sender intended to send that email.

Your best defenses against computer viruses are: 1) cautionin downloading programs from questionable sources,2) regularly scanning your drive with virus protectionsoftware, and 3) backing up all your important data to adifferent drive or media (floppy, Zip or CD-ROM) as soon aspossible. By doing all of these, if your system does getinfected, you can restore it with a minimum of hassle.

Always check out any offer or information you receivebefore sending any money or forwarding the informationto someone else. That way you can rest easy knowing youaren't getting scammed or passing along an urban legend.