Spam Stopping Tips and Tricks

There are a number of things you can to do slow down the flow of spam into your e-mail box. Here's a few of the things that you can do:
Never give your e-mail address out to any commercial site. If a site requires a mailbox, use a Hotmail or Yahoo free account. This is helpful if you need to do business with the site, such as www.amazon.com. For sites that you don't want to do business with, and never need to get any kind of email from, just use a phony address like noone@nowhere.com.
Do not reply to spam! I know some people who think if they send threatening letters to spammers, quoting some law, that the spammer will stop. They won't! Not only will they not stop, but they will mark your address as a "hot one" and sell your address to other spammers.
Change your e-mail address on a regular basis. I know that sounds pretty hopeless , but most ISPs will allow you to create several e-mail addresses. Keep a list of your trusted users and send them your new e-mail address when you change it. When your old mailbox fills up, it'll send back "non deliverable (NDR)" messages back to the spammer. Over time, the old address will fall off the spammer lists since it's inactive.

Internet and Computer Hoaxes

For years now there have been tons of Internet and e-mail hoaxes being generated and I recommend you all go to www.snopes.com or truthorfiction.com to check out hoaxes on your own. This are a good places you can go to and find out more about hoaxes and what is fact.

Hidden Folders

You can designate any folder on your computer as Hidden by right-clicking it and selecting Properties, then checking the Hidden box and clicking OK. As long as your computer is not set to display hidden files, your hidden files will remain unseen whenever you or someone else browses your computer. (You set your computer to display hidden files by opening a folder, going to View, Folder Options, clicking the View tab, and selecting Show All Files.) You should keep in mind, however, that hidden files are in no way secure. They show up on Find searches, for example. So, don't rest too easy if you designate a file as Hidden.

How to Empty the Recycle Bin

Just recently I was performing some maintenance on a customer’s computer. As I was wrapping up the session I mentioned that she had a lot of files in her recycle bin. She did not know how to empty the Recycle Bin. While this isn't something new to Windows XP, it's still helpful to know how to do it! The Recycle Bin can eat up a lot of disk space if you don't empty it from time to time. To empty the Recycle Bin, just right click on it and click the Empty Recycle Bin command. It's that easy!

Control Desktop Screen Effects

Do you like the fade effect used by Windows XP menus and tool tips? Do your screen fonts look jagged? Want larger desktop icons? Want to see the contents of your Windows when dragging it from one place to another? Or maybe you don't want any of that. Here's one way to control these screen effects:

Right click on any empty area of the Desktop and click the Properties command. In the Display Properties dialog box, click on the Appearance tab. On the Appearance tab, click on the Effects button. In the Effects dialog box, select the features you want. Experiment with different settings and see which ones you like. You can always go back and turn something back on or off if you want. Click OK after making your selections. Click OK in the Display Properties dialog box.

The settings will take effect right away. Remember, if you don't like them, you can always go back and change them to what they were.