The World of Grandpa Don

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I hate Spam.

It takes a lot of time to go through all the trash that lands in our mail boxes, deleting them, hopeful that we didn't inadvertently throw away something important. All that volume of email also taxes the capability of the internet overloading email servers and slows things down.

But, are we an unwitting contributor to the problem? When that warning of a new virus lands in our mailbox ... usually from a trusted friend ... do we immediately send it on to everyone we know and love? Of course we do! We want to protect them from harm. 

The problem is that we have done the same thing that our friend did when he sent it to us. We ASSUMED it was true. I recently received one such message about a warning (reportedly) just issued that very day by Microsoft. Except, I remembered seeing it before, more than a year ago. Sure enough, after checking with HoaxBusters ( http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/ ) I found the warning was a hoax. Simply, ... NOT TRUE!

In sending these bogus warnings we do several things. We flood the internet with unneeded traffic, slowing down the system and over burdening servers. We unnecessarily alarm our friends. We become unintentional spammers and invite our friends to do the same.

So, what should we do? We could check it out before sending it on. Or we could simply ignore it. Even if it is true, ... is the warning necessary?

Viruses are transmitted when we open an infected attachment to an email. The best defense is to NEVER ... EVER open an attachment to an email unless we KNOW it was intentionally sent by a friend. All the emails that I receive which are detected as infected by my anti-virus program are emails that I would not open anyway. No warnings of new viruses are necessary when we make it a firm rule not to open any mail or attachment that is not recognized as intentionally sent by a trusted source. We don't even need a virus protection program if we follow this rule.

And so, lets just tell our friends to follow that rule. AND ... ask them to PLEASE identify themselves when they send emails with attachments. There are viruses out there that can use your return address to propagate themselves. (Spoofing) Always put something in the body of the message which will let the recipient know it is really you who intentionally sent it. That is one of the reasons I always include one of my canned signatures in the body of my emails. (Any email utility worth it's salt includes the ability to create 'signatures' which are easily inserted into our outgoing email) It's the courteous thing to do. I would go so far to say that not to do so is downright rude! After al., ... l if you care enough to send it, ... care enough to sign it. (If that offends you, maybe it should! ... But I say it with kind intentions.)