| Choir Friends | |
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INDEX | FRIEND'S FORUM | CONDITIONS | EMAIL MANAGEMENT | CHORAL LINKS | CONTACT |
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Choir Friends - Email Management Welcome to Choir Friends, a new site designed to help former singing colleagues and choir members keep in touch, either for singing, friendship or rather more.... By registering your email address on this site your allow it to be viewed publicly on the Internet or World Wide Web. Email is a wonderful thing and allows you to contact all your friends, order online and allows you to store and answer messages in your own time. Email is also a time consuming and potentially dangerous thing particularly if it uncontrolled and unsolicited. SPAM is unsolicited mail. It name comes from the Monty Python sketch as SPAM comes with everything. What can be viewed as spam can also be malicious and contain computer viruses. This type of Spam is called a Trojan Horse as it appears innocent but carries a dangerous package. About 70% of emails I receive are unwanted SPAM or adverts, however I run 7 web sites and am a heavy user of email, both professional at at home. The first requirement for any computer is an up to date anti-virus (AV) package. Please ensure that when you buy the AV you also buy the monthly/annual upgrades. An AV package is only as up to date as its last upgrade, and new viruses are being discovered every day. You should also ensure that your PC has the latest upgrades loaded for its Operating System. Microsoft are always looking for security holes in their home and office systems and providing users with new upgrades to combat these security breaches. Buy an AV package with a SPAM filter. This software allows you to set rules to help capture possible SPAM email and keep them in a separate area until they are checked. Ideally you should only open emails from people you know, but this is not a practical solution. Check the address that the email address has been sent from and received to. Is it your real email address and has it come from a real address. Sometime a 'spider' will collect email addresses from the internet but not display them correctly. I often receive emails addressed to xzrxv@colcanto.co.uk In this case someone knows my domain but doesn't know my name - an obvious spam. If the email address that is has come from is equally obscure please ignore. If you receive an email from someone unexpected asking you to click on a hyperlink (this is a link to an email address or web site address and is normally in a different colour and underlined) do not. This is often a way of directing you to a scam site. There are bogus scam sites linking to banks, ebay, paypal and many other popular sites. These are false sites trying to get you to enter your personal or bank details into a site so that they can collect that detail and commit fraud. Equally there are get rich schemes. The most successful and well know of these is the West African Scam. This is an email that purports to be from a relative or Solicitor of as recently deceased African minister or government official. The email tells you that there is some very large sum available but because of government rules it can only be taken out secretly via a dummy bank account created by you. As you get into this scam you find yourself having to put more and more money into this account to pay alleged backhanders and handling fees without any hope of recovery or the alleged fortune. Sign up to an AV package and Microsoft updates (if applicable) and you will receive early warnings of new virus and scams (but watch out for bogus Microsoft emails). Keep your passwords, PIN codes and other access numbers secret and if the computer software asks you if you wish windows to remember your password etc for future use - say know. It means you will have to enter it again each time, but is more secure. Finally, unless you know that you have subscribed to a certain mailing list do not send a message asking to unsubscribe from that list, as this could be a route to a Trojan horse. Some times you will receive an email that 'apologies if you have received this email in error' and asks to to reply to it to unsubscribe from the email or click on an embedded link. Do not - just delete. This all gives the impression that the Internet and email are awash with corruption and indeed it is, with criminal and drugs gangs moving into electronic crime. However with up to date software, the right precautions and common sense it is possible to avoid the pitfalls.
Choir Friends is a Col Canto Associates website
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