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.