The Internet is lousy these days with worms and viruses and trojans and things that want to sizzle your cable modem. The folks at Microsoft allowed some features into Windows 2000 and Windows XP that have made life way too easy for those who think it's fun to invade or crash others' computers. If you want to learn a lot about the problems and can deal with some high-tech lingo, visit Steve Gibson's website. For years, Mr. Gibson has been warning about these vulnerabilities and is now politely saying, "I told you so."
Even if you can't understand most of what he posts there, you can use an online service he provides called Shields Up! When you run it, it will attempt to contact your computer and, in effect, break in the way a malicious intruder might. It will alert you to potential weaknesses in your system and possibly send you in search of a good firewall program.
On the 'net these days, you need a good firewall (preferably, a hardware firewall) and a good virus checker. And it's becoming more than a matter of your own safety. If you allow yourself to be vulnerable, you make yourself a menace to both friends and total strangers.
One other point: We should make it a matter of Internet Etiquette that you should not post e-mail addresses. One of the major sources of mailing lists for those who send out spam is addresses posted on websites. They send out "spambots" (robotic scanners) to surf the 'net and record any text that appears to be in the form of an e-mail address. So if you post someone's address, you're setting them up to receive spam and perhaps a worm attack as well. The current Public Enemy #1 in the virus/worm world is a thing called W32.Sobig.F@mm, which harvests e-mail addresses posted on the Internet and then bombards those addresses with infected messages. (For info on W32.Sobig.F@mm, including removal tools, click here.)
It is possible to post an e-mail address in an encoded form so that the spambots cannot read it. But unless you're going to go to the trouble of doing that, you shouldn't post e-mail addresses — yours or anyone else's.
Lastly: We really don't like Spyware, which is a general name for software that you get on your computer — often without knowing about it — that tracks information about you and sends it on to someone. Some free programs you download will quietly put a piece of Spyware on your computer. Sometimes, just going to a website will install it, either as a cookie or a scripted program. However you get these things, they're bad news so you might want to scan your system for Spyware. There are several programs available for free that do this but the two best are Ad-Aware and SpyBot. Neither will catch everything so I run each of them once a week or so.
Back to work…