Corinne Higbee

BGRCC Bulletin for March 22, 2010

We now have a member who will continue to update our web pages and get a monthly bulletin out for us with articles from APCUG being included there for your reading. Jim Antley has volunteered to do this job for the club. Harold Buechly has continued to do the updating and we want to say a great big "thank you" to him.

Gary Bernier and Doug Peace are continuing lessons through April. We will also have one on one sessions continuing into April. We want everyone to have their computers protected from viruses and malware. If you are not sure about your computer have one of our people check it our for you.

I received an email from a friend in Belgium. I thought would share it as we have been talking about email in our sessions. You have a hand out lesson on hoaxes. Many of you are now running Spybot and have seen for yourselves the tracking cookies that are on your computer. This email explains why you need to remove them and how to handle emails that contain them. I hope you better understand the importance of keeping email clean after reading the following.

PLEASE READ AND HEED. THANK YOU.

The man that sent this information is a computer tech. He spends a lot of time clearing the junk off computers for people and listens to complaints about speed. All forwards are not bad, just some. Be sure you read the very last paragraph. He wrote:

By now, I suspect everyone is familiar with snopes.com and/or truthorfiction. com for determining whether information received via e-mail is just that: true/false or fact/fiction. Both are excellent sites.

Advice from snopes.com VERY IMPORTANT!!
1) Any time you see an e-mail that says "forward this on to '10' (or however many) of your friends", "sign this petition", or "you'll get bad luck" or "you'll get good luck" or "you'll see something funny on your screen after you send it" or whatever. . it almost always has an e-mail tracker program attached that tracks the cookies and e-mails of those folks you forward to. The host sender is getting a copy each time it gets forwarded and then is able to get lists of 'active' e-mail addresses to use in SPAM e-mails or sell to other spammers. Even when you get e-mails that demand you send the e-mail on if you're not ashamed of God/Jesus. . .that is e-mail tracking, and they are playing on our conscience. These people don't care how they get your e-mail addresses. . .just as long as they get them. Also, e-mails that talk about a missing child or a child with an incurable disease "how would you feel if that was your child". . . .e-mail tracking. Ignore them and don't participate!

2) Almost all e-mails that ask you to add your name and forward on to others are similar to that mass letter years ago that asked people to send business cards to the little kid in Florida who wanted to break the Guinness Book of Records for the most cards. All it was, and all any of this type of e-mail is, is a way to get names and 'cookie' tracking information for telemarketers and spammers. . . .to validate active e-mail accounts for their own profitable purposes.

You can do your Friends and Family members a GREAT favor by sending this information to them. You will be providing a service to your friends. And you will be rewarded by not getting thousands of spam e-mails in the future! Do yourself a favor and STOP adding your name(s) to those types of listing regardless how inviting they might sound! Or make you feel guilty if you don't! It's all about getting e-mail addresses and nothing more. You may think you are supporting a GREAT cause, but you are NOT! You will be getting tons of junk mail later and very possibly a virus attached! Plus, we are helping the spammers get rich! Let's not make it easy for them!

INCIDENTALLY, THIS IS NOT A FORWARD – I COPIED THE MESSAGE AND PASTED IT IN A NEW EMAIL.

ALSO: e-mail petitions are NOT acceptable to Congress or any other organization....i.e. social security, etc. To be acceptable, petitions must have a "signed signature" and full address of the person signing the petition, so this is a waste of time and you are just helping the e-mail trackers. I hope this is useful information and feel free to share.

Favorite web sites to share:
http://www.webmd.com/  This site gives information on illnesses
http://www.rxlist.com/script/main/hp.asp This site give information on prescription medicines.