Internet etiquette for the newbie

[Balletmom]

Don't send more than two photos at a time unless you learn how to compress files. Seriously, my cousin has a couple of graduate degrees, but he shut down my mother's email by sending so many attachments, she actually put him in her spam filter. This, from a woman who can barely tell a browser from a byte.

[Acadianna]

1) Introduce her to Snopes.  When my grandmother got her first email address (at age 79) she passed along everything she saw.  Now she checks them out first and only passes the ones they verify.

Snopes can also prevent Internet novices from worrying needlessly about gangs and headlights, needles hidden in gas pump handles, and other "warning" type hoaxes.

2) Win a free [whatever] is never free.  Ever.

3) Tell her about the scam emails pretending to be eBay, PayPal, Bank of America (to name a few I've gotten in the last couple of weeks) and the ever-popular Nigerian diplomat.  Warn her never to give out bank information or passwords via email.  Let her know that many websites that as for an email address sell their lists, which increases her spam.

I heartily second these.  Some of those scams can seem very real if you're not forewarned.

[Cutenoob]

We're finally getting Mom set up with email!

Dotty,

Before you set her up with email, have you gone over general computer safety/ security?  I would think THAT is more important than using email - because once you have a good background on safety and security, you know what you can do with Email.

1. MAKE SURE *yes I'm shouting* she has a CURRENT WORKING anti virus.
2.  No banking activity for at least a few months, let her learn first.
3. Until she's comfortable, do NOT get her on Facebook and Twitter. Too many malicious programs being created JUST for those two.  
4. Use a web based email address, not an ISP address (comcast.com, att.com) because web based emails (gmail, hotmail, yahoo) are EASIER to get to online in different places.  And if you change accounts/carriers, well, you're hosed.
5. Do NOT sign up online for any kind of sweepstakes or coupons or things like that.  IF you subscribe, beware of the ramifications: spam etc. Only for logins to newspapers/ create accounts on websites.
6. Wireless in public = NO PERSONAL INFO BEING TYPED/SENT ETC.   Wireless = easy to hack & listen.

• Strong passwords have 8 or more characters
  Uppercase and lowercase letters
  Also has numbers
  Special Characters
  Example  ! @ # $ % ^  (shift 1 2 3 4 5 6)

• Don’t click on pop-ups when online –
  ESPECIALLY when they say “You’re Infected! Click here to install a cleaner program!”
  Don't automatically open email attachments.  
  If you don’t know who is sending it, don’t open it.
  If you don’t know what the attachment is about, don’t open it. Even if you know sender.

I have a powerpoint presentation you may want to look over. PM me if you do.

Cutenoob
[/list]

[Merry Mrs Martin]

 LOL does not mean lots of love

E-mails tend to be brief  like a verbal conversation or voice message not like letters
You can use E-mail to replace letters but if your sending people 4 novels a day it gets to be too much.

I second avoiding sending pictures/videos until your mom has some more skills 

[MaggieB]

I know that my grandparents had this view of the internet like "Oh, you kids are never off line.  You are constantly communicating in some way via some internet accessing device."  So it was hard to explain that we (myself, my siblings, my cousins, and our parents) don't all use the internet all the time and don't use it all at the same rate.  So don't freak out if one of us answers immediately and another's email goes unanswered for a few days.  If there's an emergency, calling is still always best.

[helixa]

I was trying to explain why you need to use bcc: but I couldn't figure out how to explain why. Why?

You could explain that the practice came from the original use of it, i.e. blind carbon copy when carbon paper was used in typewriters, with a blind copy not showing all recipients as opposed to a normal carbon copy (cc) showing all.

wikipedia lists a few benefits for using bcc:

"There are a number of reasons for using this feature:
- BCC is often used to prevent an accidental "Reply All" from sending a reply intended for only the originator of the message to the entire recipient list.
- To send a copy of one's correspondence to a third party (for example, a colleague) when one does not want to let the recipient know that this is being done (or when one does not want the recipient to know the third party's e-mail address, assuming the other recipient is in the To: or Cc: fields).
- To send a message to multiple parties with none of them knowing the other recipients. This can be accomplished by addressing a message to oneself and filling in the actual intended recipients in the Bcc: field. However, this does not ensure that the Bcc: addresses will be hidden from other Bcc: addresses in all implementations.
- When sending an e-mail to multiple recipients, one can hide their e-mail addresses from each other. This is a sensible anti-spam precaution because it avoids making a long list of e-mail addresses available to all the recipients (which is what happens if one were to put everyone's address in the To: or Cc: fields). For this reason, it often makes sense to use the Bcc: field for mailing lists. Some viruses also harvest e-mail addresses from users' cache folder or addressbook, and large CC lists may further the propagation of unwanted viruses, giving another reason to use Bcc:."