My
two “bytes”
The
Trouble with E-mail
Last
night when I went to check my email, something that I
normally do three to five times daily, I downloaded two
emails about cialis, an email about a mortgage calculator,
two emails forwarded to me by my mother, an email from
a SEO company offering to help place yorknewstimes.com
in the search engines and an email about a hot stock tip.
All spam. You might be thinking “Wait a minute; a few
of those were from your mother. What kind of son are you?”
so lets back up a moment.
Spam
as defined by dictionary.com is “Unsolicited email, often
of a commercial nature, sent indiscriminately to multiple
mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups, junk e-mail”
Not
only can spam be annoying but it can create a health hazard
to your personal computer and it can cause weakness in
relationships.
When
a spam is sent, especially if they chose the “forward
to contact list” option, your email address is instantly
available to all the rest of that list that receives the
email. That in itself could be all right except for the
fact that not only is your address available to those
using the computer legitimately but also to anything that
may be living INSIDE of that computer. Many viruses these
days have the ability to scan computer files for email
address and add them to their “send to” list. So not only
do you need to trust the person that sent the email in
the first place but also you need to trust everybody else
that email was sent to and everybody they forward that
email to and so on and so on. The list of people that
now have your email address on their computer can get
very large very quickly.
Not only do emails pose a serious threat to your computer’s
health but they can actually cause distance in relationships.
Many people do not often think about sending an email
unless something important has happened. They will however
send a forward, much less effort involved. Later they
count that forward as an email sent but it wasn’t really
anything of value. “Ohh I should email about this to so-and-so”..
“I just emailed them last night though” Inspiration passes
and the news is forgotten. Communication degrades.
So
about my mother’s two forwarded emails, funny though I’m
sure they were ,they were deleted just as the midi music
began to play. I sent an email to her later about it as
well as other important news.
The
internet, just like any other powerful tool can be used
for good or for ill. It can be used to enhance relationships
or it can be used to degrade them so be careful.
I
got an email last night about this very thing. What’s
your email address? I will forward it to you.
Darin
Hudson
My
two “bytes”
Opinions
from the tech savvy side.
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