Everyone uses e-mail, and to the surprise of many people, your e-mail can be used against
you. E-mail should be treated as a post card, in that anyone who looks can read the
contents. You should never put anything in an ordinary e-mail that you don’t want to be
read. That being said there are strategies for securing your e-mail. In this section we will cover
safe and sane e-mail usage and how to protect your privacy online.
Everybody likes to get e-mail. A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away it used to be you only
got mail from people you knew, and it was about things you cared about. Now you get e-
mail from people you never heard of asking you to buy software, drugs, and real estate, not
to mention help them get 24 million dollars out of Nigeria. This type of unsolicited advertising is
called spam. It comes as a surprise to many people that e-mail they receive can provide a
lot of information to a sender, such as when the mail was opened and how many times it was
read, if it was forwarded, etc. This type of technology – called web bugs – is used by both
spammers and legitimate senders. Also, replying to an e-mail or clicking on the unsubscribe
link may tell the sender that they have reached a live address. Another invasion of privacy
concern is the increasingly common “phishing” attack. Have you ever gotten an e-mail
asking you to login and verify your bank or E-bay account information? Beware, because it is
a trick to steal your account information. To secure yourself against these types of attacks,
there are some simple strategies to protect yourself outlined below.
