Email Safety: Before You Forward That!

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

I have noticed a lot of forwarded letters from friends and family. The act of receiving a mass mailed letter doesn't bother me one bit, not even chain mail. Seeing my email in a huge list that has been given to countless numbers of people does. Here is a little bit of short and simple information for email etiquette to help you and your mailing list stay safe.

Protect Others

• Use BCC

If you have to forward an email to several people use the BCC, this will allow all the people you are sending it to to remain antonymous. No one want's 300 spam mail letters to their email account.

Protect Your Self and Your Family

• Don't forward with your personal signature attached.
• Don't use email with your full name for social letters.
• Never give even basic personal information in email or chats that are not encrypted and with a reputable source.

Email can reach limitless amounts of people with a single froward, do not allow personal information to fall in to the wrong hands. With a name and a phone number a good criminal can obtain enough information to use your identity. Even if people can't access your money or credit, they can use your name, phone number, and address in other circumstances.

For example, a few years ago my friend received a notice he had a bench warrant in an area he has never been. As it turns out some one who had his full name and address gave it to the police as his own when receiving a jay walking ticket. My friend had to travel to another state and have the issuing officer verify he was not the man he wrote the offense out to.

Protect your family and household!

• Never spread an email that lets people know you have children or live alone.
• Never spread an email with dates or times your not at your house.

With your phone number alone most people can find your home or work address. This makes it easy for a predator to break in to your house, stalk you, or worse. People with children and elderly need to be extremely careful of online predators, they are predators off line too!!!

Here are some links to help you find out how vulnerable you are and how to help protect yourself and your emails.

E-mail safety information

Prevent Spam Mails


See what others can with your phone number alone:
whitepages
yellowpages

Computer Gadgets: Clipmarks

Sunday, April 27, 2008

This is a real simple and cute program I use to save clippings from the web. You see I'm a real note geek, I like to write it all down. I keep enough lists and notes to drive a normal person insane.


It's not intentional, and after i sort threw the stacks I find out most of them are the same thing several times. I just forget I already grabbed it, or I couldn't find it and copied it again. I always meant to make some kind of digital storage for my notes, but that requires effort.

Then these clipping programs came along and helped me clear my desk. There are a few that I use in collaboration to make my on line filing cabinet, but this is the one I will cover first.

http://clipmarks.com/
Clipmarks is a really simple program for both IE explorer and Firefox. It stores your clips on line so you can access them any where, or sends to an email, or publishes to a blog. You choose each time you clip where you want it to go.

It has a super simple design, just click the tool bar icon (or right mouse click) to turn it on. Then highlight or click on a block of text, when you have all that you want, click the icon again. A window comes to ask what you want to do with the clips. (ie. save, email or publish) Give the item a title and a description if you want and thats it!

Not only does it save what you want it to, but it also provides you a link of where you got it from automatically. This program is free, and I have field tested it to know it's safe. If you do research or have any reason to highlight or review, I suggest taking a look. As always, this program is free, but it does require registration.

Link: http://clipmarks.com/
When you want to access

Tools: Enso and Alarm Clock

Monday, April 14, 2008

I have today some thing simple yet so useful. These are two tools I use every day, they are a staple for my on line productivity. I hope they are a help to you, I know they are for me.

Enso: Spell Check
http://www.humanized.com/enso/

This is one of the most useful tools any one can have on their computer. It is a windows based program that checks spelling on or off line, with out damaging formating. I have used this program to check everything from forms to my blog posts and Photoshop text.

It also offers a dictionary and thesaurus, but they are web based, so you need an internet connection to use them.

Second I have an On line Alarm Clock.
http://onlineclock.net/

It is just what it says it is, you get the time and an easy to set alarm clock for when you really only have 15 minuets, and you mean it.

Enjoy!