Everyone enjoys receiving jokes, funny pictures, etc., from friends and/or family, but email is the easiest route for viruses. Newer virus worms and trojans are being programmed to infect and/or steal your personal information. Irresponsible email practices will also expose you and your acquaintances to spam. Below are a few suggestions to avoid such complications:

1. If you receive emails from eBay, CitiBank, PayPal, or other "well known" companies, especially if you have account with them, DO NOT click on the link and answer any requested information from that link, unless you want your identity stolen! This fraud/scam is called Phishing. Visit the Federal Trade Commission Consumer Page for more information on Identity Theft.
2. If your email somehow ends up on mailing (spam) lists which say, "To be removed from this list, reply and enter 'remove' in the subject line", do not reply.
3. Do not open an email if you don't recognize the sender. You can retrieve a virus, or at the very least, be spammed. If you use Outlook or Outlook Express to retrieve email, remove the checkmark next to "Show Preview Panel" so that the email is not executed as read when your mailbox opens.
4. To protect your Outlook or Outlook Express address book from being intercepted, should you receive a virus - add an entry in your address book, listing the name as #####, and the email address as ###@####.com. This invalid email address will disable the virus' ability to steal addressbook entries and spread the virus.
5. To protect the privacy of those whom you forward jokes, jpeg/gif pictures, etc., enter all recipients' email addresses in the "BCC" line and remove all previous recipient email addresses.
6. DO NOT FORWARD Chain Letters, Hoaxes and Urban Legends, hoping to receive money, or to inform friends of a crime in a parking lot, or even to share empathy for the sake of a missing child. If a child were missing, or a crime occurred...the Internet will never be a replacement for local law enforcement.
7. To report email abuse, first, set your mail header to full view, then forward the email to the senders domain (e.g. for AOL: abuse@aol.com; for Hotmail: abuse@hotmail.com).
8. To maintain your main email address privacy, create a web-based email web-based email account. Web-based email has great filtering systems which is easy to set up so that you never have to receive unwanted mail.