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How to avoid receiving unsolicited junk email (a.k.a. spam).

There are two aspects of being the target of spam: take steps to keep your real email address off spammers lists but if you do receive some, take steps to prevent damage to your computer or those of anyone whose email address you have. Spammers obtain their addresses from many sources including web pages, usenet newsgroups, and other people's personal computers.

Web pages

If your address appears on a web page on the internet you can be sure to receive spam. Webmasters have a responsibility to ensure that steps are taken to encrypt what are known as 'mailto' links to make it as difficult as possible for any addresses to be 'harvested' by 'robots'. It is better not to encrypt every mailto on the internet in the same way so each webmaster should find their own way to do it and after encryption any page must past the tests at http://validator.w3.org/. If a webmaster is unable to do this, perhaps another career should be considered. ;-) If your address appears unencrypted on someone else's pages, you can ask for it to be removed, but it's probably too late.

Usenet News Groups

On 19 September 2004 our junk email destruction service saved one of our users downloading more than 150 Windows viruses masquerading as 'microsoft security patches'. This was in excess of a single 17 Mb download in one afternoon. Can you afford to download that much rubbish using a dialup connection? Do you simply want to cut off one source of junk email? If you're using Windows you'll want to avoid viruses spread by email to addresses harvested from usenet postings or other sources.

If you are fed up with receiving spam to the address you use for usenet or other postings, it's time you used a valid but junk-only email address. Send £1 cheque payable to 'Tight Fit Theatre' to TFT, 42 Heath Road, Beaconsfield, HP9 1DG, UK with your desired username (e.g. yourname@invalid.org.uk) and a note of your genuine email address. Your invalid.org.uk email will not be forwarded (it will be deleted from the server) but I will keep an offline, paper-based register of authorised users of invalid.org.uk addresses. You keep the address for life. Just so long as your registered email address (which can change - admin charge £1) remains valid.
(N.B Use of an unregistered invalid.org.uk address will attract a charge of £50 per usage.)

Other People's personal computers

If you look at the table on the right (you may need to refresh the page) my bet is that you will see many (if not all) virus alert names beginning with 'W32'. This means they target Microsoft Windows and is probably the best reason not to use 'Windoze' except behind a router or firewall with expensive and up-to-date software protection from 'malware'. Some of these worms, viruses and trojans are not only sent by spammers, they are themselves a form of 'spambot' and may be able to harvest the addresses in your address book or in any file on your 'pee sea' and send them to spammers. The problem with virus protection is that it is very difficult - if not impossible - to innoculate against a virus which doesn't yet exist. In other words, the cure exists only after the problem has occurred, which is too late if your address book is privy to spammers. Please, don't ever store my address on any version of Microsoft Outlook. Last time I checked, the average time for finding a cure for a virus was 5.2 days. Think how much damage can be done in five days. Best of all, eschew the mainstream operating systems (Windoze, Mac, Linux) and buy the latest RISC OS machine as I have. Virus writers haven't heard of it and are unlikely to attack it as there are so few RISC OS machines 'out there'.

More about spam and forged emails ...

If the table below doesn't show the top ten alerts, try refreshing the page.

How do I send Word files by email?

In one word: don't. Here's why:

Not everyone has a copy of Microsoft Word, nor wants to buy a copy.
Even if they do....
Other programs which can load Word files will probably render the same file differently*.
Even if they have the same version of Word as you: If their default layout and printer differs from yours, the same file can look different*.
There is a danger with Word files that they are sent containing revisions and other information which may be confidential.

* 'different' means (e.g.) that bits (e.g. images and WordArt) will be invisible.

You may find it better to use a PDF (Portable Document Format) file. These can be created FOR FREE using PrimoPDF.

If you use OpenOffice, which also is FREE, that can save PDFs directly. You can be pretty certain that what you see is what was sent. If your system has no PDF reader, the Adobe Reader can be downloaded for most operating systems. Or from here for RISC OS.

(This page is a work in progress and incomplete)

If you wish to contact me try here: postmaster@invalid.org.uk,

visit my web site: www.timil.com,tjrh

or use the 'write' button below.