On average, how many of your email messages are junk/spam/spyware... the things you will just delete without opening? Then I ask you how many are jokes from friends and family members? Finally, out of all those jokes you receive, how many of them do you forward on to your 'mailing list' of people?
It is quite safe for me to say that over 80 percent of the problems I see are still related to email issues, or at least that is where the problems would have started.
As much as I would love for the 'don't buy gas on this specific day' to actually work and see how it may impact a company like Exxon, I am pretty sure it will not, so I will not be sending that one on, nor will I send on any form letter email that has no personal touches to it since I know better. One method of helping with the elimination of problems would be to limit the amount of jokes you forward on each and every day. Even if your receivers are fine with the fact that they get their jokes from you, limiting it to say, one per day will make a world of difference. But most of all, the problems with downloading your mail to your computer,regardless of what it is, is the biggest problem by far, this is why using a web-based email, even the one your Internet provider provides to access your email over the web, can save you from potential disaster. Now many of you will say "yes, but I like using outlook express... because I am used to it".. other then the fact that you are used to is, the point being it is time to learn other methods, not that you can't continue to use outlook express, but learning that you can log in to your email account over the web, deleting all the junk and leaving only legitimate email in which you can then open your outlook express to receive will make an impact on potential disaster. One great method I have found is to utilize Google Mail's great filtering and forwarding. You can have all of your mail forward to Gmail, get filtered, and then opened through your normal P.O.P.client such as outlook express. Not only does it filter your mail, but it does a great job of archiving it as well!
