Common sense tips

The following tips apply for your workstations both at home and at your place of work/study.

13 October 2008 (rev 4)

Links: Staff email (Outlook Web Access) • Student email (WebMail/SurgeMail)

1. Common sense tips

It is Good Practice to have at least three different personal e-mail addresses (or mailboxes, strictly speaking)—one for work/study, one for family and friends, and finally a ‘disposable’ or ‘sacrificial lamb’ one via some ISP service for use when corresponding with people whom you do not know.
Spammers have an armoury of automated techniques for harvesting e-mail addresses to augment already huge so-called Spam-Lists. Therefore, always try to avoid disclosing your e-mail address on newsgroups, on chat-channels (IRC), on web pages, etc. One clumsy but effective approach is to write your e-address in a human-readable but otherwise very-difficult-to-harvest format—Joe stad Soap at CS stad UCC stad IE or perhaps joeDOTsoapATcsDOTuccDOTie.

Another trick-of-the-trade is to insert a tiny .GIF or .JPEG file containing a picture of your email address!

Avoid activating the automatic reply function in your e-mail client software—it only confirms to spammers that your e-mail-address is in use.
Remember to download the free updates for your operating system over the Internet as often as possible in order to close new security holes etc.

Keep up to date via relevant Internet websites. It pays to learn about the workings of spam, viruses and suchlike e-mail-related issues. Also, learn about the different file types so as to be aware of what email attachments are and aren't advisable to open.
Learn how to use a firewall to protect your home workstation against Internet intruders.