Don Law's four commandments for email

1) Thou shalt NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER forward ANY email that says, "forward this to everyone you know."


There is a 99.9% chance that it is a hoax. You will get emails warning you abovt viruses, about poor little children that need your help, about scams that you need to watch out for, about the government infringing on your rights, and about how you can make quick money. All of this email is carefully crafted to take advantage of you and accomplish one thing: to get you to forward the email to other people. Do NOT forward any email like this!

There are several useful websites that allow you to very quickly see if an email is a hoax. You should visit these and just take a quick read to make yourself less vulnerable to this junk that wastes so much time and bandwidth.Don't get duped!

http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html
http://truthorfiction.com
http://www.Vmyths.com

2) Thou shalt get thyself a lifelong email address


Whenever any mail is sent to that address, it is immediately forwarded to the email address of your choice. Normally you will forward it to the ISP (Internet Service Provider, like AOL) mail service that you use. When you switch ISPs, as we all do from time to time, you simply forward your lifelong email address to your new address and you are done. You don't have to tell anyone that you have changed your email address.

These used to be available for free. There are several companies out there that will still issue you an email address for free, but they will bombard you with spam.

There are several of these available. pobox.com is another good one, but it charges a small fee - something like $20-30 per year.

3) Thou shalt guard thy email address, protecting it from spammers


Nothing is worse than spam, which is junk email from somoone you don't know trying to sell you something you don't want. Spammers are constantly combing the Internet in search of your email address. If you ever get on one of these databases, you are stuck there forever. It is hard to avoid this, but you can try by never entering your email address in any web site - i.e. don't give your email address away to anyone other than your friends.

You will find some web sites that require you to register, which requires an email address. What I do in this case is create a seperate email address for myself that I use just for this purpose. You can create a second email address using Yahoo mail or one of many other different free web email systems.

4) Go back and read commandment #1 again.


Commit it to memory. Don't let your willingness to help others out be used against you and your email friends.
I hope these tips lead you to an enjoyable email experience!