The recent instances of virus appearing with incoming mail has been around for some time. There are vandals out there in cyberspace who have automated systems that can ' harvest ' email addresses, use them as fakes in the "From" slot in the header and perform all sorts of other nasties. So the malevolent email you receive is probably NOT from the person who is shown as the sender.

This is a reminder to us all that we should ensure that our subject lines are relevant and meaningful because this is usually an indication that the email is tainted.

We all have to defend our selves against these problems in much the same way as we lock our homes and cars to prevent unauthorised entry.

Everyone should have an anti virus application and should keep it up to date. Once a week is sometimes not enough. Equally sending warnings of a virus attack serves no purpose because by the time it is received it is probably too late. Many of these warnings exhort you to send to everyone in your address book. Don't do it. The only advice is to delete the email and update your protection regularly.

Another danger exists in the mail that invites you to send an email to be removed from their mailing list. This is usually a fraud and the only advantage is to the sender because he finds that he has a genuine email address if you do reply.

Another equally inane problem is the chain letter. "Send this to five friends ..... etc ....etc" This should be ignored. It is adding clutter to the internet at the most generous perspective.

The bogus mail and spam can be detected with a mail washer. This has to be formatted over a ten to fourteen day period. It allows you to read the message headers on your ISP server before you download. and it will then remove unwanted mail without you having to read it. The instruction advise that it be set to delete and bounce but bouncing is a two edged sword and my advice is merely to delete and it will always delete.

The last nasty out there are programs that settle on your machine and send details back to their base without you being aware.

So here is an advice list:

For Virus protection: Anti-virus guide.

FIREWALLS: Firewall Guide

A growing number of profit-driven hackers have learned that the surest way to your organization's assets is to target your unprotected PCs - in particular, remote access and wireless networked PCs - with a custom-coded attack.

Targeted hacker attacks are increasing at an alarming rate, becoming the most costly and devastating type of enterprise security breach.

Unwanted adverts and SPYWARE: Spyware Guide.

Mail Washing: http://www.mailwasher.net

MailWasher is the easiest way to check and manage your e-mails before you download them. It is a powerful email checker with effective spam elimination. Discover the safe way to stop unwanted viruses and e-mails before they get to your computer. No gimmicks here, it is so easy to set up and use that you'll be managing your email like a pro in seconds. It can even be used as an effective privacy tool. I think you will find this to be the easiest, most effective way to manage your incoming e-mails. You will be amazed at how quickly you will like using MailWasher

Cloudmark Spamnet: Overview

An alternative for fighting SPAM is a cooperative spam blocking system. Once installed all incoming email is checked against shared online data base and if the header matches a known spammer, the message is moved to separate spam mail folder instead of the incoming mail box.

If you do receive a spam email, you just click on "Block" and it is instantly blocked for all other Cloudmark users in real time. Once a day, you can view the spam folder if you like to check and see that nothing marked as spam was really a valid message. There are now over 40,000 people participating in the use of this groupware blocking over a million spam messages per day.

Best of luck in cyberspace.