Don’t help spread SPAM

Help reduce SPAM in your friends mailboxes - Many things you can do to protect yourself from SPAMMERS getting a hold of your e-mail address. Don't publish your e-mail address on the web, in chat rooms, on message boards, etc. Be sure to make sure that websites you visit haven't pre-checked a box including you in receiving special offers, etc. But a fair amount of exposure of your email address can be out of your control.

Don't forward chain e-mail messages - Besides increasing overall e-mail volume, by forwarding a chain e-mail message you might be furthering a hoax — and meanwhile, you lose control over who sees your e-mail address (and all e-mail addresses in the body of the e-mail).If you're sending the latest Friday Funny, or a quick promotional offer to friends and/or colleagues, don't use TO or CC. These types of email have the tendency to be passed on to persons unknown, the result is that everyone you've listed as an original recipient could be easily added to a list by an unscrupulous individual. What makes this worse is that not only are the original recipients easily visible, but also the subsequent chain(s) of people.

* Before sending out theses types of e-mails first of all, be sure the recipients wish to receive them. Even though the recipient knows you, they may view these types of e-mails as a nuisance. (also as a side note, check the validity on http://www.snopes.com/ before sending it on. Many of these types of e-mails are hoaxes and circulate on the internet over and over again).
* Set up a contact in your e-mail contact list called "undisclosed recipients" use your own e-mail address as the address for this new contact.
* When you hit forward to send your new message out, be sure to delete all of the old header information in the email. At this point you are left with just the body of the e-mail.
* In the "To:" field of the new email - enter "undisclosed recipient" (this will be your e-mail address)
* I the "BCC:" field, you enter the names of the people you wish to send your e-mail to. This "Blind Carbon Copies" the recipients to the email, and the only address that shows up is your own, keeping your recipients information private.

SPAM can not only be a nuisance, but could also be phishing for personal information, contain viruses and could be potentially devastating to your computer files or result in identity theft.

more resources:
http://onguardonline.gov/tutorials/spam/spam_wind.html
http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/tips/ST04-007.html
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/tech/tec02.shtm

Also, be careful when opening attachments in emails even if they are from someone you know. It could be possible that a worm virus has infected someone's computer and sent the virus on to everyone in their contact list.
more information on viruses:
http://www.computerhope.com/vlist.htm
http://www.microsoft.com/protect/computer/basics/virus.mspx
http://us.mcafee.com/virusInfo/