Craig's Tips for Email Newbies

(And those who are but just don't know they are)

We're all "newbies" (new to the Internet) at some point, though for some of us it was a few years ago. Those of us who live more in cyberspace than "meatspace" (the real world) do our best to be patient but sometimes it's not enough.

If you follow the advice in this article you'll instantly graduate from newbiedom and, perhaps more importantly, won't irritate your friends and relatives as much as you do now.

If you're offended by the suggestion that you're a newbie, then just pass this along to someone who is. If you're a newbie and you're offended by the suggestion that the rest of us find you irritating, well… "honesty is the best policy." Just read the article anyway and see if you learn anything

TIP #1: IT'S A FAKE!!!

It doesn't matter how terrible the virus scare is, how soon the little girl is going to die, how many free trips to Disney World Bill Gates is giving away, or how many emails the government needs to receive to convince it to change the law: Every "act now for the good of humanity" email you get is a fake. It may not make sense why someone would fake it, but trust me… it's all nonsense. And since it's nonsense...

TIP #2: NEVER forward an email to your entire address book.

Again, it doesn't matter how cute you think the story is, or how cleverly the sender used "/" and "*" to make a picture of Mr. Spock, or what the attached program claims to do: We probably got the message once or twice already and we don't want to get it again from you. There's never any reason to send an email to your entire email list.

TIP #3: Just because your email address changes, that doesn't mean you should violate Tip #2.

You may care a lot about the people in your address book, but most of them don't care at all about you. Notice how you send them lots of stuff – all that forwarded email about gays taking over the schools or the latest virus scare – but they never write back? That's because they're busy doing Important Things.

So even if you change your email address, don't violate Tip #2. Just mention it in the next email you send to the people with whom you communicate frequently. Better yet, have your old ISP forward email to your new address or set up an "autoresponder" to reply to anyone who send you mail at the old address. This could cost you a couple bucks but hey, there's no such thing as a free lunch.

The real solution to having your email address change all the time is to get an email-only account at your own domain. Chances are good that yourlastname.com is available, or if not, then yourlastnamefamily.com (as in RairdinFamily.com). You can own a domain for less than $20 per year. You can get it set up with a bunch of email accounts for everyone in your family for a few dollars per month. Then no matter where you move or what ISP goes out of business, your email address will never change. See www.justanotherhost.com (my hosting company) for inexpensive email-only accounts.

TIP #4: NEVER open ANY attachment to an email, even if you know who it's from!

Treat every attachment like a computer virus, because most of them are. Even a Word document (.doc) can be infected with a macro virus. Be especially wary of executable files like .exe, .bat, and .pif. When you run these they can do literally anything to your system, and usually they will.

There are a small number of safe attachments. Generally you can safely open a text file (.txt), an image file (.jpg, .gif, .bmp), or a sound or video file (.wav, .mpg, .avi, .mp3). If you own a Zip utility you can open .zip files but be careful what you do with the contents.

There's no reason for most people to send you an executable attachment. If they're sending you some game they found, they're violating one of Craig's Tips anyway, and who knows where it's been or how badly it's infected. And many viruses spread by automatically sending themselves to everyone in the address book of an infected system. So it may look like it's from Uncle Charlie, but it's really from the Melissa virus that has infected Uncle Charlie's machine!

TIP #5: NEVER forward clever, cute or inspirational emails, programs, graphics, or whatever to anyone!

This seems harsh but there are two principles at work. First is that what you think is clever and cute, most other people may think is dumb and a waste of time. They're not going to run it and you force them to have to think of an excuse why they didn't do it so they won't offend you.

Second, this is a classic way of spreading viruses. Someone forwards a funny program to you. You run it and it infects your system. You forward it to your friends because you think they'll enjoy it. A week later you're all at Best Buy buying new hard drives.

If you recognize yourself in the examples above, there's no need to be offended. Just resolve to do better in the future, and next time you get one of those annoying virus alerts or "our email address has changed" messages you can just laugh at the newbie and send them a pointer to this article.