I. Email Etiquette

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Due to the limitless boundaries of the internet, unfortunately there is no guaranteed solution to establishing a favorable email environment; however some of the tips and suggestions highlighted below if followed, should help improve email etiquette amongst email users and provide a more user-friendly email environment.but fundamentally, it is up to the individual sender/recipient to be sensitive and considerate when sending and/or responding to email.

Addressing Email

Message Format

Message Content

Reducing E-mail: A Collaborative Effort

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II. Phishing

What is phishing?

Phishing involves attempts to fraudulently acquire confidential, proprietary, financial or personal information through the use of a seemly official, but bogus, electronic notifications or messages, such as electronic mail messages or pop-ups. Phishers try to trick the users into completing an electronic form or visiting a web site to correct or update passwords, credit card details, social security numbers, company secrets, etc. All the while the phishers are stealing the information to gain access to computer systems, financial records, healthcare records and other information resources.

Phishing Triva:
The word phishing comes from the analogy that Internet scammers are using e-mail lures to fish for passwords and financial data from the sea of Internet users. The term was coined in 1996 by hackers who were stealing AOL Internet accounts by scamming passwords from unsuspecting AOL users. Since hackers have a tendency to replacing “f” with “ph” the term phishing was derived. (Source: Webopedia)

How do I avoid phish hooks?

How do I identify phish bait?

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III. Spam

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What is Spam?

Spam is unsolicited electronic mail, usually sent to multiple recipients in bulk. The parties sending the unsolicted mail ( known as the spammers) obtain your electronic mail address from the Internet places you frequent such as web sites, newsgroups, and special-interest group (SIG) postings. There are programs or spyware that are written specifically to automatically compile email addresses from some of these places. Spamming is one of the biggest hacking attacks carried out on the Internet. Spams costs victims money due to lost time, CPU, disk storage, and communications bandwidth.

Spam Trivia: Why do they call it spam?

Spam® is a registered trademark for a Hormel Foods Corporation canned meat product (“spiced ham”). The use of the term “spam”, to describe the volumes of junk electronic mail swamping our inboxes, is said to derive from a famous Monty Python sketch that revolved around the characters repeating the word “Spam®” over and over (”. we have Spam, tomato & Spam, egg & Spam, Egg, bacon & Spam…”). The sketch was popular when spam first began appearing in our inboxes and acquired the name spam because the junk mail was viewed repetitive, annoying and interfering with productive communication. Email that is wanted is sometimes referred to as ham.

What can I do about spam?

Currently, the only way to completely avoid spam is to avoid sharing your electronic mail address with others. Admittedly, it is both impractical and impossible to keep your electronic mail address a secret just to avoid spam. You have to give your electronic mail address to legitimate parties if you want to receive electronic communications from them. However, there are several precautions that you can take to reduce the amount spam you receive:

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IV. Spyware

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What is Spyware?

Spyware is a program that is used to secretly track, gather and transmit information about an individual by tracing the individual’s online footprints (activities). Spyware is used mostly by advertisers to send spam or junk mail.

Spyware is transferred onto your computer either from a virus, or when installing a new program or if you click on an “infected” pop-up. A lot of the free software downloaded from unreliable sources on the internet contains spyware which get transferred onto your computer when you install them. The advertisers and marketers pay to have the spyware included hence the software is available for “free”.

There are other data collection or tracking programs that are installed with the user’s prior knowledge and consent and used for legitimate purposes; these are not considered as spyware. Spyware is installed, tracks, collects information and transmits them back to unknown individuals without the users’ knowledge or consent. Cookie is an example of spyware.

How do you prevent spyware?

1) Never download unto your computer software programs or files from unknown or un-trusted sites on the internet. The most common way of transmitting spyware is via downloaded programs from the internet. However, there are some reputable sites that are usually free of spyware.
2) Avoid visiting questionable sites. Some spyware are installed automatically just by visiting an infected site even without downloading or installing any program.
3) Close unwanted or un-expected pop-ups immediately by clicking on the “X” on the upper right corer of the window. Never click within the pop-up window even if it says “cancel” or “close” or “exit”. Some pop-ups are deceptive as they include an image of a cancel or quit button within the pop-up misleading unsuspecting users into clicking the pop-up and activating the spyware.
4) Block Active X objects. If you’re using Internet Explorer as your browser, change the settings to “block Active X” objects.

To do this, :
a) Click “Tools”
b) Click “Internet Options”
c) Click the ” Security” tab;
d) Click on “Custom Level…”.
e) Scroll down a little to the “Active X controls and plug-ins” section, and check the Disable button on all applicable options (singed, unsigned, and unsafe Active X controls).

Some Active X objects are spyware so doing this will block them.

5) Activate Windows firewall and pop-up blocker.

Follow the steps under the pop-up section to activate the pop-up blocker.

To turn on the firewall, follow these steps:

a) Click on “Start”
b) Click “Control Panel”
c) Double click on “Windows Firewall”
d) Check the “On (recommended)” button
e) Check the “Don’t allow exceptions box”
f) Click “OK”

If you’re running Windows XP with Service Pack 2, then you can turn on the pop-up blocker and windows firewall. These actions won’t stop spyware altogether, but they can help reduce it.

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V. Secure Sites

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Most financial, banking and other commercial sites use a secure connection to conduct online transactions and/or transfer sensitive information over the internet. Secure connections involve using additional security features like encryption, authentication, session timeouts and digital certificates to protect data. Passwords and other data is encrypted and decrypted at both ends of the transmission (the requesting site and the responding site) to prevent anyone listening between both connections (hackers, crackers, sniffers etc.) from viewing, obtaining or altering sensitive information.

Most website URL’s begin with http:// before the main address but secure sites begin with https://. Typing https:// as opposed to the standard http:// into the Web site address activates the certificate and on connection, your browser then displays a padlock symbol on the status bar at the bottom of the browser to signify that the certificate has been activated. Never ever enter your credit card or other extremely sensitive information in any site that doesn’t have https:// preceding the URL and the padlock symbol on the status bar.

Additionally, before connection is established, your browser may also display an alert to inform you that you are about to view pages over a secure connection and prompt you to either continue or quit.

The digital certificate is proof of the other site’s identity and genuineness and without it, your browser will not send any data through.

You can choose to proceed, quit or view the certificate.
Once you are on the secure site, Internet Explorer allows you to check the certificate. Double-click the lock icon on the status bar at the bottom of your browser. This displays the security certificate for the site.

Digital certificates prevent fraudulent sites from spoofing genuine sites for malicious intent. If the certificate obtained from a site doesn’t match the certificate expected by your browser, your browser will alert you before proceeding.

When you leave a secure site for one that isn’t secure, your browser will alert you so as to know that any information you transmit henceforth will no longer be encrypted or secure from others over the internet.

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VI. Trusted and Restricted Sites

You can classify some websites as trusted sites if you are sure they are safe from spy-ware, spam, etc. Classifying them as such means whenever you visit them, your browser can assign a different, less rigorous level of security to them than other sites. A Restricted Site is the opposite of a Trusted Site. This classification is for sites that could be potentially harmful thus classifying them as Restricted means your browser can assign a more rigorous security setting to them to prevent harm, like prompting you before allowing pop-ups or cookies from such sites.

Making a site Trusted

To make a site trusted, on your Internet Explorer browser’s main menu select:

1) “Tools”
2) “Internet Options.”
3) “Security”
4) Click on the “Trusted sites” icon (the green circle with a white checkmark)
5) Click “Sites…”
6) Type the URL of the trusted site into the top box (NOTE: if you want to make a secure site trusted, it must have the “https:” prefix, and you need to check the “Require server verification (https:) for all sites in this zone” box below)
7) Click “Add”.
8) Click “OK”

To remove a trusted site, repeat steps 1 – 5, and in the “Web sites: ” section, select the site you wish to remove then click “Remove”, then click “OK”.

Making a site Restricted

Follow steps 1 – 3 then:

4) Click on the “Restricted sites” icon (the red circle with a white horizontal line)
5) Click on the “Sites…” button to type in the URL. (These sites will always be regarded as a restricted site by your browser until you change it).
6) Click “Add”
7) Click “OK”

To remove a restricted site, repeat steps 1 – 4, and in the “Web sites: ” section, select the site you wish to remove then click “Remove”, then click “OK”.

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