How often do you receive an email with the sender address of
someone you know, but there is nothing in the message body to identify that
person by name, only an attachment or a
URL link?
Do you click on the attachment? Open the link? Or do you merely hit the delete button?
The first two choices could be deadly to you computer, while
the third might cause you to miss something your email buddy wanted you to see,
but will give you peace of mind that nobody is hacking in on you.
There is a fourth choice, though I always hesitate to
exercise it. You could leave the
message in your In Box and send a separate message to the sender asking if they
really intended to send that message with subject line: ----- (fill in the
subject) Then you wait for a response,
yes or no, to decide what to do with the original message.
There are numerous scammers and tricksters out in the
Ethernet who would love to hack into your computer for unworthy purposes. Some do it just to be malicious, but there
are many who do it to gather sensitive personal and financial information about
you, even to steal your identity.
Common email courtesy should include in any
message you send that has either attachments or links, or both, a brief introduction line with your name appended to
it. It can be as simple as: Hey,
take a look at this one - Harry (Don't
use something that is part of your email address as your identifier, though)
It doesn't matter what you choose to type into the first
line of the message body, but don't leave it completely blank, or (God forbid)
forward all those email addresses from prior forwarding before you received it
in your In Box. Delete the crap and
input one line to show that you really did intend to send the message/link/attachment
to your email buddy.
BE EMAIL-SAFE OUT THERE, AND BE COURTEOUS TO YOUR FRIENDS!
