Why Should People Be Careful With Their Email Address?
It's important to be careful in giving out your email address. Internet dangers include receiving computer viruses via email attachments and elaborate phishing scams. At the very least, you can be harassed by unwanted spam mail. Take precaution in keeping your email address safe.
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Viruses
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Ill-intentioned people can send you an attachment with a virus to corrupt and destroy your computer and files. Once you have opened an infected attachment and downloaded it, the virus will embed itself in your computer. You could also receive an email from someone you know whose infected computer has used his address book to send out emails with the virus.
Do Not Open It
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Never open an email if it seems suspicious to you; delete it instead. Install a high-quality virus scanner into your computer. The best are able to check for viruses in email attachments. Just make sure to keep your virus scanners up to date on your computer as these programs will identify the infected emails with the newest virus versions.
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Phishing
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Phishing scams trick people into giving out their personal and confidential information. Important information that scammers "phish" for can be credit card and banking details as well as user names and passwords. People are tricked into thinking that the email is from a legitimate business or company. These emails seem official through use of logos and wording. They often look like emails from banks, well known Internet sites or business services that normally require banking information, passwords and usernames. These usually come with a request to click on a link that will then take you to a site that has nothing to do with the company or site they are posing as. Never click on these links because real institutions that deal with money never ask you to give your personal and confidential information through emails. If you do ever give out this information accidentally, contact the legitimate organization or business immediately to make them aware of this.
Spam
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Unfortunately, when you give out your email address over the Internet, you create a lot of email traffic in the form of spam, or junk, mail. Spam is extremely annoying because it can fill up your inbox. Spammers get ahold of your email address when you post it on other websites, which they search. Junk email is then sent to your address, often asking you to register or sign up for something. To avoid getting spam mail, download anti-spam filters that can block most of the junk mail.
Spoofing
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"Spoofing" refers to emails that are sent by spammers using email addresses other than their own. You may become aware that a spammer is using your address in this way when you receive an email stating that an email that you sent failed to be delivered. If you know that you didn't send the particular email referred to, then that means that someone used your email address to send the failed email. These emails are not harmful but they are annoying and there isn't a lot you can do except to delete these notices as you receive them.
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