By Lisa Mostyn

Let me ask you a question: you get a letter in the mail box, delivered by a postman, asking you to send it on to ten friends or else you will get bad luck.

What do you do? Do you sit down, write out ten copies, get ten envelopes, ten stamps and then send the ten copies, or do you consign it to the 'round filing cabinet?'

Dear Computer Lady,

I read your newsletter each week, like some folk do the Bible.
I'm a "Newbie" at this game of computers and do not fully
understand the e-mail system in Outlook Express. I save your
column every week for references. But I'm stymied when I
receive e-mail from someone I don't know and to be honest I'm
scared to open them because they might contain viruses.

Is there some way to highlight the "strange" e-mail without it
popping open and possibly contaminating my system. This way I
can contain it, right click on my mouse and hit delete. Thanks
for the educational newsletter you publish to us folk out here.

Bill

If you're like me and receive more spam that legitimate emails  everyday, then you can emphatize with my frustration. Our email addresses are flooded with so much spam daily that its been predicted (so I've read) to render email communication useless in a few years.

Anyway, let's now get into that now. Let's say you have a shining new (and spam-free) email. How do you protect it and ensure that it stays tha way. Or even if you have an email address that already receives spam, let's not invite more!

Here's some positive steps I've taken which helps a lot.

For years I didn't worry much about spam.

But lately it's got out of control. Over half of my email is now spam, and it was growing by the week - until I took action.

This article shows you some strategies for winning the war on spam.

By Paul Judge, CTO, CipherTrust, Inc.

Email is the quintessential business communication tool, so when it doesn’t work like it’s supposed to, business suffers. Anti spam software is designed to protect your inbox from unwanted messages, but unless your system is properly trained even the best software misses the mark and flags legitimate messages as spam. These messages are referred to as “false positives.”