"TechPoint" - The techie edge

If you received an email with subject like "Bill gates is sharing his fortune" and you forwarded it, then we need to talk. Welcome to the world of spam! Spam is unsolicited junk email sent to large number of people, usually for advertising or marketing on the internet. The act of doing this is called spamming and the people who do this are called spammers. Spammers collect email addresses from various sources and also buy from companies which share email addresses. Some spam emails have link to click to unsusbscribe from their email list, it is normally a good idea not to click on those links as that would only confirm your email address and cause more spam to be sent. It is a good idea to filter those email addresses from reaching your inbox or report them as spam to your email service provider. Do not forward emails that say things like "Easy money making tips" or something like "Bill Gates is sharing his forture" or "You do not love your friends/relatives if you don't forward this". Some spam emails tell you that if you forward this email to 20 of your friends, that their system will track it and you will earn so much money and continue to earn money as your friends forward them and so on. There is no such thing as a system that tracks and pays you for forwarding.
When you forward what happens is, you are not only revealing your email address but also revealing email addresses of your freinds and relatives and giving spam to them. All these forwarding spam emails are a source to collect valid email addresses.
Spammers also sometimes send out emails like "a child is suffering from blah blah and needs O+ blood, contact this number if you can donate or forward and so so". Don't fall a prey, its a source to find a wealth of email addresses! If your instinct tells you to believe it, spend atleast a minute to figure out if it is true.

Steps to avoid spam:
• Do not open any spam emails or click on any links that they recommend including unsubscribe.
• Do not forward spam emails to your friends and relatives as these are ways of revealing email addresses to spammers.
• Strictly don't trust any email that comes from a source that you do not trust.
• If you however, want to forward emails, use email addresses in the bcc field instead of the To or cc fields.

"Ten years out, in terms of actual hardware costs you can almost think of hardware as being free -- I'm not saying it will be absolutely free -- but in terms of the power of the servers, the power of the network will not be a limiting factor," Microsoft's chairman said.