What are good email safety practices that I should follow?

Question: What are good email safety practices that I should follow?

Answer: When you receive an email, there is always potential that it could have some sort of scam or virus attached to it. When you receive an email and you do not know who the sender is, it is recommended that you do not open the email as it may have a virus, Trojan horse, unsolicited advertisements, adult content, or phishing scams that try to get your personal information. If you received an email from someone that you do know, and it has an attachment, it is a good idea to have your anti-virus software scan the attachment before you open it, even if it is from a trusted source. If your friend’s computer is infected with a virus, it could be sending out emails to spread its infection and the first place it will be sending emails to will be everyone in their address book.

Be sure to set your password to something difficult and complex that other people cannot guess. A good idea is to have a strong password, which will include Upper and lower case letters, numbers, and special characters like punctuation marks. If you have a strong password such as “cheRRypie!4me” it will make a person or password cracking program have a very difficult time at finding what your password is.

It is also a good idea to change your password often. Some companies will require that it’s employees need to change their password every two weeks. Although it may be a thorn in your side to do this, it is much better than the alternative of having your identity stolen. Other things to remember is to keep yourself, you do not need to share it with anyone else.

Do not reply to spam, harassment, offensive, or chain emails. Replying to them just lets the spammers know that they do have a valid email address and you will just increase the amount of spam emails that will be sent to you.

The final tip that I have for you is to use common sense and keep your personal information such as user name, password, bank account number, etc personal. It should be kept to yourself and no one else.

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