Email has allowed communication to become so integrated with each moment of our life. We all want it immediately and we cannot have it go down, or worse yet, have a SLOW SERVER. It’s amazing when you tell someone you sent an email they swear they don’t have how the “Slow Server” excuse comes up.

Hello! You cannot blame it on that anymore. That was Prodigy 3.0!

But, what do we do with email now that has replaced other functions in our daily lives? Well, we generally keep our lists, notes and other information we want to hold onto in email. It used to be you used a notepad or post-it. For some reason, I never WRITE anything anymore. It’s only on forms that I make someone else fill out because I’m not really writing anymore - only signing my name. I can only imagine how many AOL users have lost phone numbers and other information with their ‘auto-delete’ feature on email. It’s such a great thing to have your email allowed to stay online up to 7 days, unless you “save on aol” or “save on your pc”.

The only problem is, unless you save it on AOL, which they don’t provide much room for, you better hope that you are on the PC where you have the “keep all incoming” mail feature setup. Only hope that every time you upgrade AOL (and if you do beta you are in WORLDs of trouble) - that you upgrade from the proper previous version already on your PC.

But, as to AOL — that’s a whole different topic - we will talk about that again some other time.

Email has allowed people - without personal interaction - to say pretty much anything they want. Say you are online, in a chatroom. You see someone very attractive. You want to talk to them. So, based upon your confidence level, you mouse over to the Buddy Info nav and decide - do I IM or do I email? The choice is clear - out of your league - mail; in your league - IM. I mean I’ve seen nearly anything said in an IM - the only difference is that in real time it’s still very personal.

Don’t get me wrong, IM is a great way to talk to someone about a problem without actually being there and provided enough space to allow you to “feel” as if you aren’t in a personal confrontation.

But more than ever, email is now used in ‘les than comfortable’ situations. Email is now the #1 followup method to a date. Doesn’t require your personal attention and you can proofread and re-write a thousand times before you press “send.” If you send prematurely, don’t worry, you’ll be able to UNSEND to an AOL (from AOL ) address - or if on exchange with the same person - you can recall it. But in the REAL WORLD once you press send it’s over. Just like when you first open the door to let someone in your home.

I love email. You see, I’m one of those guys who in a personal confrontation hopes to get voicemail. I make the call, sweat and pray to get voicemail instead. Sometimes I even convince myself it’s going to GO to voicemail based on the rings or other noises. But email - that’s the best way to communciate in those types of ’sticky’ situations.

Email sometimes carries very strong languange that would not be dispersed to employees otherwise. Email is one of the best ways to break up with someone. Email has replaced the regular photos from family members to keep everyone up to date with the family.

So, email is a wonderful thing. But SPAM is a terrible thing. 90% of my email is SPAM. Well, granted, I do take a very public position in many ways, but the spam i get isn’t for help or contributions - it’s everything you can imagine - and we have to figure out a way to stop it.

Let’s use a case study of a [strong]large dial-up provider[/strong]. They have millions of members and lately they have had a huge focus on protecting their members from online predators - popups, viruses and spam. I had the joy of having my login hijacked recently, which allowed me the fine pleasure of talking to the ‘Community Action Team.’ Sounds like a group of AOL users who are the ‘moderators’ and try to keep people in line. Instead, I reached a call center in India with a woman who I was not only unable to understand, but she had a canned ‘pause’ of ‘I understand your frustration and I will do my best to help you. Just one moment.’. After 20 minutes of this banter, I chose to call the ’special’ line for ’special’ accounts. So, I rang the ##. Got a very pleasant man on the phone who was able to help me get my account straighted back out - and he mentioned that I may have gotten a trojan from one of those “Instakiss” emails I probably receive.

So, I probably got a virus from a common email on the service? I can’t take it - I have to ask ‘WHY DO YOU ALLOW THE ‘INSTAKISS’ EMAILS THROUGH YOUR SERVERS IF YOU KNOW THEY ARE ALL SPAM AND TROJANS AND YOU DON’T GIVE OUT INSTAKISSES AS THE EMAIL ALLUDES? YOU KNOW IT’S SPAM!”

They said they were working hard to control spam.

I’m aware this posting has taken several turns, but I’ll leave you with some information. If you want to properly protect yourself from SPAM and viruses and adware and spyware - you cannot have TOO MUCH protection.

I have the spam filter running on my server.
I have McAfee protecting my system from Viruses, Spam and Spyware.
I have “Outlook Spam Filter” by SoftLogica in my Outlook to remove spam.
I have AdAware by Lavasoft.
I have SuperSpyBot and that finishes the collection.

Make sure you use them ALL. You cannot be too protected.