Part of Janet Elizabeth's Computer Help

Visit the excellent Get Safe Online web site and learn how to protect yourself from identity thieves, viruses, phishing and other internet threats with expert advice from the British government. See how you can cut the risk of a nasty surprise just by sticking to a few sensible Do's and Don'ts.

From their Home page, look below "Your Questions answered" and choose one of the (black) text links to read about your chosen topic. Or ...

... I suggest you Watch videos first. My first choice there would be the man labelled Intro (which you have to scroll down for!) but they are all worth watching. Remember to click the triangular Play button to start the video clip.

Another good site for advice about e-mail, if you ignore the adverts, is Family Internet Safety.

Phishing e-mails try to trick you into revealing information such as your bank account details and passwords. Some of these scams are ingenious, offering you rebates or suggesting you have lost money already or may lose access to your account. Never follow a link from e-mails like this.

Watch this short video called Phishing Scams in Plain English by Lee and Sachi LeFever of The Common Craft Show (select the Play button to start the video).

The Payments Council manage the Bank Safe Online web site where you can see how banks are being impersonated. Follow the Bank Safe Online link or the Payments Council logo here first, then scroll down and choose your own bank, to see what the phishing messages could look like for you.

Read more about recognising and dealing with Phishing scams at Hoax-Slayer's phishing page. Hoax-Slayer includes advice on what to do if you have already been tricked.

A good place to learn about computer viruses, worms, Trojan horses is Microsoft's page of Viruses: Frequently Asked Questions.

Prevention is much better than cure so if you are using Microsoft software, do get some antivirus software and some firewall software; and don't open any suspect e-mails, attachments, or web links.

Some people are worried by cookies. Probably the best place to read both the good and bad points about cookies is the BBC Webwise guide to cookies

A message that tells you to "Forward this to all your friends" is a chain letter in e-mail form. It may seem harmless but it is usually untrue and some can be intimidating.
If you really must forward chain e-mail, please take these steps to reduce the risks:

• Protect the friends you are forwarding to
  put all their addresses in "Bcc" (blind copy) box instead of the "To" box.
  (find Bcc under Options, View or below To.)
• Protect the friend who sent the message
  delete your friend's address from the beginning of your forwarded text. For kindness sake, remove everyone else's details too.

You can read about the risks associated with e-mail hoaxes and chains at GetSafe Online or Easynet's Chain and hoax e-mails or see Hoax-Slayer which I describe next.

Is this e-mail a hoax?

How can you tell if an e-mail is a hoax? If you receive a strange e-mail and you are not sure if it is genuine, a good place to look for it is hoax-slayer. To see if your message is a hoax:

1. highlight and copy 8-20 words from the suspect e-mail message
2. go to hoax-slayer.com
3. click in Hoax-Slayer's' search box, top right
4. paste your text into the search box
5. click on Search or press the Enter key
6. scroll though the list to find the message you had

Hoax-Slayer will usually be able to show you if your message is genuine and where and when it originated. You may be surprised!

Interesting articles at Hoax-Slayer.Com

The Hoax-Slayer web site has many informative articles. Topics include why people create hoaxes and whether e-mail petitions are useful. It also has some useful tips to help you use e-mail efficiently and securely.

Use their index on the left to find links to lots of other useful and interesting topics.