Email Etiquette

Email Etiquette

Web is full of suckers.

Most of them pretend to be your Advisor or Saviour.

This is true with obtaining VISA.

But they are suckers.

They are out there to get your money and email and more importantly your personal details.

They use your identity to get involved in undesirable activities.

Beside your government or its stooges are the most untrustworthy.

For example your Grama Niladari is not innocent.

He/She provides your information (sometimes incorrect) to the politicos and often leave important documents lying around.

Not in a safe or safe place.

In that way I am against this new trend in e-governace and e-commerce.

They provide these information to third parties and there are no legislation in this country to prevent them doing so.

Most of is done under the name of prevention of terrorism but now used for political mileage.

The police is not selective but they are corrupt.

They have no mechanism to anticipate and prevent disaster.

They are always after the fact and slow to respond.

So with this background my advice is simple.

1. If you do not need an email or not competent enough in using please do not open one.

2. If you do have one do not share it with others.

It is private property like an address.

Like our politicos you cannot have more than one birth certificate or more than one identity card.

3. Hackers are out their to use you as a Zombie.

Identity theft is a serious offense.

Our politicos operate in this way.

4. If you are opening an email, you should have at least two not one, for good reason.

I forgot my password for my private email it took three months for me to recover.

I forgot the 'the pet phrase' and the document that I wrote them was misplaced.

After three months, my memory recovered by accident and the pet phrase (now I have a pet phrase recovery method) was typed in to get back to the normal working order.

This was time I was migrating from Microsoft (dual booting) to Linux so my memory loss was not due to sickness but due to work overload and lack of sleep.

Trying to do too many things one at the  same time and wasting my time downloading Linux at night.

It was appallingly slow and University download was even worse and was restricted.

This was the time I had a university email and it was hacked by a guy who worked there for a while (temporary may be) and did some damage due probably to personal vendetta after leaving the university.

He took the password and the email password document of a particular faculty with him.

This was the time of mistrust and terrorism in its peak and with the most bizarre password (it was stolen) of all, I had was stolen.

The password was file was stored in a Microsoft Server which was available for the hacker/s.

So my conviction to go for Linux for the sake of Security was of paramount importance and the university was slow to adapt to Linux.

I never used university portals for my work and developed my own little private network which is practically dismantled to save my electricity bill NOW.

My daughter's Microsoft computer at home with 

wireless connectivity was hacked most probably by a guy in the Engineering Faculty but never ventured to capture the culprit / guy but changed my tactics to be secure.

Coming back, if you forget your password, the easiest way is to give the service provider the alternative email so that they send an instant email for you to have a new password.

This simple technique was not there 15 years ago.

5. The use of alternative email gives you flexibility.

6. I have many emails and one email is for money transactions only and I do not give it to anybody.

7. Another is to keep track with my batch mates and I always get the sad news of demise of another guy with serious illness.

8. Another one for all the academic / magazine articles.

9. The email what I regularly use is called the Junk Email. So anybody who sends an email to it is considered a JUNK MAN / WOMAN.

10. My biggest problem is when I kick the bucket who will be responsible for them.

I have already forwarded them to Apaya Director to take appropriate action since I will be in Apaya as a guest speaker since I have done nothing to stop the Sri-Lankan National / International criminals who go scot free from all their crimes and his / her / their balance of crimes have been credited to my account by accident.

I need to clean my balance sheet at Apaya before I think of my next birth.

Not Sri-Lanka again by default.

I am tired living with criminals, including Cyber criminals.