If you've been on the internet for any length of time you are familiar with email. It's one of the first things you learn to use. Your first email address is probably through your internet service provider. If you have internet service with AOL you might have the email address yourname@aol.com

Once you have your own website you may decide you would like to have an email address that is associated with your domain name. For example, my email address is cliff@clifflawless.com. We also use the email addresses Billing@lltnetservices.com and Support@lltnetservices.com. This is set up through your webhost (see our section on webhosting).

There are a couple of ways we can set this up for you. A regular email account or an email alias.

With a regular email account you receive a username and password. You go to the account setup section of your email program and choose "Setup New Account". You then input the account information we send you.

With an email alias we create an email address on the server and all mail sent to that address is forwarded to your current email account. There is not setup process.

Email Scams and Urban Legends

As with anything else, people have found ways to abuse email. Some are fairly harmless, others can cost you a lot of money.

Spam

Let's start with the fairly harmless. Unsolicited email, also called "spam". Anything from real estate opportunities to Viagra to pornography...you're likely to get it if you have an email account. There are programs that can be purchased to help combat spam, and you should be careful to whom you give your email address, but once it's been added to mailing lists it's very difficult (impossible really) to stop.

It's best to never answer spam messages. Even requesting to be removed from their mailing list will only confirm that your address is valid.

Spam is not totally harmless as it costs millions of dollars each year for servers to handle these mass emailings.

Urban Legends

These have to be some of the most irritating things I receive. Most of the people who continue to send them are sincere people who don't have a clue that they've been "got".

Urban legends were around long before the internet but with the advent of email and the web they have really reached a new level.

Probably the most widespread of all time is the Microsoft/AOL email tracking system test. They will pay you cash ($245.00 per email, last time I checked) just for sending mass emails. People are receiving $10,000.00 checks for just two weeks of sending email! It never happened folks. If something sounds too good to be true...

Other popular legends include:

Missing Child Alert: Ashley Flores - She's not missing and in fact no one knows if there even is an Ashley Flores

Cell Phone Users Must Register With National "Do Not Call" List - The claim is that a new law just passed will allow your cell number to be sold to telemarketers. Not true.

Applebee's Gift Certificates - "Applebee's will give you a $50. gift certificate for sending out emails". Sorry, they won't.

Several Major Brands of Lipstick Contain Dangerous Levels Of Lead - No they don't. The FDA regulates the cosmetics industry.

These are just a few of the more popular legends that regularly circulate. My advice is NEVER BELIEVE ANYTHING UNTIL YOU VERIFY IT. There's an easy way to do that. Always go to Snopes.com to check out the story before sending it on to everyone you know. Snopes is the top site for Urban Legends and Internet Hoaxes.

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