Email is probably the easiest way that a hacker can introduce damaging viruses and other programs into your computer without you being able to stop it. There are a lot of things you can do to protect yourself from dangerous emails and email safety is really just a matter of paying attention and not doing anything that seems reckless. Email safety is all about following some easy steps and remembering that any email you get from someone you do not know, or someone you did not initially contact first, should be suspect. When you practice email safety you can practically eliminate any threats of email viruses getting into your computer and causing serious damage while potentially stealing your personal information. So let’s look at some basic tips on email safety.

Always back up the important information on your hard drive. You never know what could happen from day to day so it is always a good idea to back up your personal folders on a weekly basis just in case you have to reload your computer or reformat your hard drive. Backing up your personal files is a good habit to get into because you never realize just how important your personal files are until they are gone for good. So don’t be that person that wishes they had backed up their computer when a virus crashes it.

One piece of email safety advice that is seldom given is that you need to be careful when signing up for mailing lists. There are people out there that sign up for joke of the day email lists, recipe email lists, and a myriad of email lists that always end up in a whole lot of spam junk email in your inbox. At some point, if you sign up for enough of these mailing lists, your email address will find its way to a hacker and then you will find yourself the recipient of an email that looks like it is from one of your many email lists but is actually a virus instead. Email lists are fun but try and manage them so that you do not wind up with an email virus.

Email safety is based on paying attention and the most important piece of email safety advice anyone can give you is to never click on links in emails. Many criminals will send you emails disguised as emails from organizations like eBay or Paypal and they will ask you to click on a link within the email to confirm your personal information. You click on the link and you are taken to a login page that looks like the eBay login page and you enter your username and password. Then nothing happens. Actually, something did just happen. A criminal just stole your username and password and unless you change your password immediately all of your eBay information will be stolen. So never, ever, under any circumstances do you click on a link in an email that takes you to a login page. If you receive an email with a log in link the report it to the company that it claims to be from immediately and let them tell you if it is a legitimate link or not. Your personal information is at stake and if you make the wrong moves you could be spending years, and potentially thousands of dollars, to repair the damage done by clicking on one simple link in one dangerous email.