Computer expert John Dvorak lists the future of e-mail, if he has his druthers. Better e-mail would include: improved reliability and confirmation of receipt of all e-mails sent; a standardized address scheme; universal forwarding; spoof-proof authentication, which would eliminate spammers' ability to "spoof" (i.e. forge) valid e-mail addresses; full encryption of all e-mails; and systemic antiviral agents that purge e-mails of viruses before they are delivered. We can dream, can't we?

E-mail services and programs come in a variety of flavors. "Freemail" is provided by a number of outfits such as CoolMail (no longer free), Crosswinds, Excite, FreeMail, Graffiti.net, HotPop, LycosMail (formerly Mailcity), Mail.com, Microsoft's HotMail (not recommended because of a host of security problems recently exposed, as well as Microsoft's relentless attempts to sign up users for Passport), Net@ddress (highly recommended by several sources but no longer free), WhaleMail (no longer free), Verizon Mail, Yahoo! Mail (recently expanded and highly recommended), etc. (Not to mention the umpty radio stations, Web sites, and everyone else who "provides" free e-mail, usually through the services of one of the freemail providers above. Find out before signing up, and be aware that these offerings are rapidly disappearing, as are the accounts of their users.) They are all supported by advertising, usually accessible from anywhere, and especially useful for those who need a second account outside of their primary account. Freemail's major drawback is its relative lack of security. ISPs and online services such as AOL, Prodigy, MSN, and CompuServe provide their users with proprietary e-mail accounts, often using e-mail programs that are incompatible with most other systems, making it tough to send certain kinds of files, etc. to/from these services to users with different e-mail systems. POP3 (Post Office Protocol) is the first standard for Internet mail and widely supported by the most popular standalone e-mail programs such as Eudora, the Bat!, Microsoft Outlook Express, and Netscape Messenger, along with most of the freemailers. A newer protocol, IMAP4 (Internet Message Access Protocol version 4) is particularly useful for users who access mail from multiple systems, and provides a backup system POP3 lacks. The best-known provider is Eudora's WorldMail Server. Groupware is LAN-based software used primarily within corporations. Lotus and Microsoft, among others, provide products for this aspect of e-mail. Your best bet depends on how you access e-mail and the Internet. Online services are beginning to make their e-mail systems POP3-compliant; AOL is providing a new e-mail system integrating elements of Microsoft's Outlook Express with its 4.0 version. If you access the Internet through a smaller ISP and don't like the e-mail system it provides you, find out if it will support a free POP3-compliant e-mail program like Eudora or Pegasus, or consider accessing your e-mail through a freemail server. You also need to know if your e-mail client supports file downloads, and what kind. Juno won't allow any files to be transmitted (is this still true?). Most Windows-based e-mailers allow MIME-encoded files, which can be decoded through WinZip and other decompression utilities, and many allow the Unix-based UUencode. Very few will translate BinHex files, which is a Macintosh-based protocol. S/MIME is a more secure version of MIME that supports e-mail encryption; important to those of you interested in keeping your competitors' noses out of your secret mailings, not so important for those of us who mostly circulate "Little Johnny" jokes. Check out www.screen.com/start/guide/email.html for further information. Want to send anonymous e-mail? You can try blanking your address in the Options dialog in your e-mail program, but that won't fool an experienced user. To do it right, use a remailing service like Anonymizer or Replay Associates; find a list of remailing services at anon.efga.org/Remailers and www.sendfakemail.com/~raph/remailer-list.html. Lots of general info on freemail and related issues is available from www.emailaddresses.com/free_email.htm, and the Free Email Providers Guide at www.fepg.net/ compares freemail providers, although it doesn't seem to have been updated lately.

The current "killer" freemail is Gmail, from Google. Although using Google's mail client is free, you have to either apply for an account or be "sponsored" by someone who is already a user. Don't ask me why. Apparently, invitations for Gmail accounts are hot commodities on eBay. (Yes, I have an invitation sitting unused in my Yahoo inbox. No, don't ask me for one, I haven't activated a Gmail account. Yahoo's Web mail suits my needs just fine, and I don't want to go through the hassle of redirecting everyone to a new account.) One of the nicer features of Gmail is "message threading," which works something like the messages on a message board -- you can "thread" a sequence of messages between yourself and a recipient in what Google calls "conversations." Gmail also gives you a gigabyte of storage space, more than most of us will ever need. As a result, Gmail prefers that you archive old messages rather than delete them, but you can delete them if you want. And you should, for no other reason than tidiness. You can also send and receive relatively large files and attachments (as of this writing, 10mb is the limit), something that most Web-based mail clients won't let you do. Other features? Well, it's fast, it's almost ad-free (nice!), it has lots of keyboard shortcuts, it has a relatively primitive spellchecker, it's working to improve its spam filter, and if it hasn't already, Google will soon incorporate Gmail into its browser toolbar. Overall, I'd say it's definitely worth checking out. Or surf to www.gmailforums.com/ or gmailgems.blogspot.com to find out more about the program from its users.

A relatively new and somewhat different freemail utility is My Real Box, located at www.myrealbox.com, run by Novell and NetMail. This one lets you access your mail using any e-mail client or Web browser, from anywhere, and also allows for mail forwarding.

One drawback to freemail is their relative intolerance of large attachments (except for Gmail -- see above). If you receive a file attachment of over 1-3MB, often your freemail client will either refuse to attach it, or truncate it, resulting in a mess. WhaleMail (www.whalemail.com/) is a client that allows attachments of up to 50MB to go through, though it's no longer free.

Some of the more well-known Web mail clients, such as Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, and Operamail, are charging for their formerly free services. Operamail has added a Premium e-mail service to their free, ad-based mail client, as has Yahoo and Hotmail. Mail.com is pushing a variety of pay services on their clientele, and USA.Net has gone to a fully paid service.

Note to all AT&T mail users: your e-mail address will be changing from attbi.com to comcast.net at the end of 2004. AT&T Broadband customers will have two email addresses during that period, their new comcast.net address and the old attbi.com address.

Want to send certified mail over the Net? It isn't Post-Office certified, but the folks at CertifiedMail.com will let you send e-mail to your recipient through their Web site, store the message in their "mailbox," and send a notification to your target. They then surf to the mailbox, enter the correct code, and view your message. Certified notes the date/time they read the message, and lets you track the whole process with your browser. If it performs as advertised, it's a safe, free way to send secure e-mail without encryption. See for yourself at certifiedmail.com/.

PCWorld's December '99 issue has so much info about the various e-mail services and what they're capable of doing, I'm just going to give its URL and let you guys peruse it for what you need: www.pcworld.com/current_issue/article/0,1212,13480,00.html. If the URL changes for some reason, the article is titled "Postmasters." The article is a bit dated, but much of the info is still valid.

A relatively new kid on the block is Zero-Knowledge Systems' Freedom, at www.zeroknowledge.com/ or www.freedom.net/. For $50 a year, Freedom provides you with up to 5 digital IDs to use online so you can keep your real identity secret. Gee, if they'd provide a really keen uniform with a chest logo and a cape, I could really surf cool. Not.

Some security tidbits: Hushmail (www.hushmail.com/) is a freemail provider that takes security seriously. Messages you send from your Hushmail account are heavily encrypted to keep prying eyes from reading them. The only drawbacks are that recipients of encrypted mail must also be Hushmail users, and Hushmail stores all of its encryption keys and password info on its own server -- not good enough for some of us. Hushmail also requires fairly current browsers.

Find out more about the various e-mail types at these sites: for POP3 info, go to www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1939.txt. SMTP and ESMTP info can be had here: www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0821.txt (SMTP), www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1869.txt (ESMTP), and www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2554.txt (ESMTP).

A simple way to send material that can't be seen by the casual user is to send it compressed in WinZip, zipping the file(s) with a password. Only someone with the password can unzip the attachment. Of course, any determined hacker could crack the password in a matter of hours, so this isn't good enough for serious security, but it's good enough to foil the average snoop. For better security, try PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), described below.

Do I even need to remind you to scan all e-mail attachments for viruses before opening them? Your best bet is to download them without opening them to your hard drive (you may want to designate a special folder for suspect downloads) and scan them before opening.

A new and even more fun way to scramble your machine's innards is with "VB script" files. Not all VB (Visual Basic) scripts that you're sent contain viruses, worms, and/or Trojan horses, but enough of them do to make it worrisome for you. Here's a way to add a little extra security to your system in regard to these little critters: by following these directions, you can have the files harmlessly displayed in Notepad where you can read them without them being actually opened. Sneaky, huh? Millennium users have it easy: all they need to do is to go to the Control Panel and select the Folder Options icon, select the File Types tab, and when the files are displayed, find one with one of the following extensions: .JS, .JSE, .VBS, .SCR, .SHS, and .SHB. Select it, and click the Advanced tab. Now, highlight Edit and press the Set Default button. That changes the default from "Open" to "Edit." Win 95/98 users, it is slightly more difficult for you to pull this off. You need to go to an Explorer window and select View, then Folder Options. Click the Files tab and scroll through the file types. You will see the extensions in the small window at the bottom. When you find a file with one of the extensions mentioned above, click Edit. Now select Edit from within the Actions list and click the Default button. That should do it.

Interesting note: What you think is your e-mail address might not actually be your address. Your ISP or e-mail server might actually use an expanded name for you that you aren't aware of. Example: those on MSN who use an address like me@msn.com actually are named me@classic.msn.com or me@email.msn.com. Is this an attempt to deceive the innocent e-mailer? No, it's an attempt to provide better routing through layers of complex systems, to allow e-mail loads to be shared among multiple machines, etc. Companies want things to seem simple even when they're not. The problem comes in when mismatches give users different "inbound" and "outbound" addresses. Then mail becomes lost and people get irate. How to find out your real address: Send yourself an e-mail. When it arrives, shut down your e-mail application and copy - not cut or move - your Inbox file to another directory. (It's either under the file extension .MBX or has the name "inbox" somewhere in its name. Do a file search.) Open this copy of your inbox directory in WordPad or QuickView. Look for the message you sent yourself. Buried in the raw data of the header will be your own name as the sender. You'll see your e-mail address in there, too. If it's different from the e-mail address you know, you've been aliased. Remember, this is not a cause for alarm unless you're having e-mail problems. And, this won't work for AOL users.

You can check your e-mail while you're away from your computer with a minimum of difficulty. The rationale is that your e-mail sits at your ISP until you check it and pick it up. How do you check it when you can't log in from your home? Simple, you do it through a Web-based "freemail" account such as Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail. You just need to be prepared with your login name and password, and the name of your ISP's mail server. It's probably something like "mail.ispname.com," but you'll need to call your ISP and ask them. Anyhow, before you leave, set up your freemail account to check your home e-mail (go through "Options" and follow the directions). If they ask you which "port" you want to use, use port 110 -- that's almost always the default setting that everyone uses. Now you can use your freemail account to check your ISP mail also. (You may be asked if you want to take your mail off the ISP's server; if you say no, it will stay as "new" on your ISP; if yes, it'll disappear. Your call.) After you configure your freemail account, go back to your freemail inbox and click on the button that says something like "POP" or "external mail." This is where you get your ISP-based mail delivered to you. Don't be surprised if it comes up in a browser window and not the usual Eudora, Outlook, or whatever window you see at home. AOL users, your ISP handles mail differently than everyone else (pains in the rear that they are), but all you need to do is visit www.aol.com, enter your user name and password, and AOL's Netmail feature replicates your AOL inbox inside a browser window. Don't be surprised if you get a "We're sorry, but..." message instead of your mail. Try again in a few minutes. Workaholics, you may have a tougher time checking your office mail, since it's likely your mail resides behind some kind of firewall or security system. Ask your office techie what you should do -- if nothing else, you should be able to have your office e-mail forwarded to a freemail account. Note: Yahoo! Mail handles large attachments better than most freemail clients (see below), and sends e-mail to pagers or cell phones with little fuss.

Problems sending and receiving e-mail? Troubleshoot your e-mail by first sending yourself a message -- something short like "Hi!" will do. It should leave and return within a minute or so. Check that the incoming message has the right name and e-mail address in the FROM section. Make sure that your outgoing e-mail has the correct return address on it. If your mail account is balky, consider using a forwarding service. If your ISP is balky or throws you off, you lose your e-mail service from them; consider using a Web-based or another separate e-mail POP service. It never hurts to have a freemail account anyway, as a backup in case your provider goes nutso on you. Did you receive a confused message with a garbled attachment? Corporate mail systems often scramble Internet mail attachments; the best way to handle this is to use a Web-based e-mail account. Many people use Microsoft's Outlook Express (bundled with MSIE) or Netscape's Messenger (bundled with Communicator) for a backup e-mail program in case their primary utility goes on the fritz.

AOL users, you can't keep e-mail in your "inbox" past 27 days; after that, it evaporates. Use FlashSessions to copy your mail to your hard drive. Log on, then click Mail and then Set Up FlashSession to open the appropriate window; then select whatever tasks you want FlashSessions to perform. To activate a FlashSession, click Mail and then Activate FlashSession Now. You can also automate these sessions.

Paste a Web link into an e-mail message by right-clicking on the link, choosing Copy, and then Pasting it into the body of the message.

Dress up your e-mail with audio, video, and/or animated graphics. The simplest way is to use Win 98/ME's inbuilt Sound Recorder. This utility, available in the Accessories/Entertainment menu, lacks file compression and requires a microphone, but is quite simple to use. The only trick is to decide which sound quality to use. In general, the Telephone choice (as opposed to CD or Radio) is best because it provides the smallest file size by far -- your recipient doesn't want to wait an hour to hear you say "Whaazzzzupppppp." Most recipients not using antediluvian PCs will be able to download and play back your message. Video is a different beast; Windows doesn't provide an easily usable utility for making and sending video clips, but there are plenty of Web cam and digital video utilities on the market (see my audio and video page for a listing of free- and shareware products). If you're sending something really large, consider compressing it using WinZip or another compression utility.

Keep away, evil spam: Refrain from opening spam whenever possible -- even opening it sends a return receipt to the spammer which confirms your e-mail address and primes you for more junk mail. Don't send replies or requests to stop receiving mailings to the spammers: not only will they record your address for future spamming, they can also use your e-mail address to "ricochet" messages to thousands of innocent users, who will in turn fire off angry replies to YOUR address. Be relentless in your complaints to your ISP about junk mail (although AOL users are out of luck, since you have to open the spam to forward it to their TOSSPAM service and AOL doesn't seem to care anyway). When sending messages to newsgroups, add the phrase DELETEME to your address (i.e. me@fubar.com becomes me@DELETEME.fubar.com) -- just make sure to put a note in the bottom of your posting telling recipients to remove DELETEME from your e-mail address before replying. This practice, called "spoofing," keeps spammers' e-mail auto-collectors from getting your address from your Usenet postings. You can do this with private e-mail addresses, too, but it annoys people and doesn't do much good. If you use anonymous FTP downloading, be aware that many FTP sites snag your password (traditionally your e-mail address), which are often copped by spammers. Use a fake e-mail address to log on. Another technique used by spammers to "harvest" your e-mail address requires that they send you a message in HTML format; embedded in the message is a 1x1 transparent graphic that automatically downloads to your machine, confirming that someone with your e-mail address opened and read the message. Toggle the HTML option on your e-mail client "off" to thwart this spam scam. If you use Eudora or Outlook Express as an e-mail server, they come equipped with filters to keep the spammers away. (Eudora is popular among Internet heads, but it won't work with content providers like AOL and CompuServe -- yet. A "lite" version of Eudora is available from www.eudora.com/, and a comprehensive, unofficial (and slightly out-of-date) help site is available at www.cs.nwu.edu/%7Ebeim/eudora/; Eudora's own FAQ site is at www.eudora.com/techsupport/win/faq/, and a newer info/download site is at eudora.interweb.be/. Eudora is also available as a Web-based freemail client from www.eudoramail.com/) AOL claims to protect its members from spam, but its "protective services" are minimal, and AOL is notorious for prostrating itself for the spammers' convenience anyway. (AOL spokespeople claim that no other provider "has been as aggressive as AOL in trying to combat junk mailers." What a laugh. Check out www.aolsucks.org/ for the dirt on AOL's spam practices as well as other AOL gossip.) One way for AOL users to minimize the amount of spam they receive is to delete their user profiles; spammers regularly surf the profiles in search of valid e-mail addresses and users who might be interested in their wares. Join the fight against spam at www.cauce.org/ and at spam.abuse.net/spam/, and surf to combat.uxn.com/ for a plethora of antispam sites and utilities. Check spam.abuse.net/ for a spam-fighting tutorial, and www.cco.caltech.edu/~cbrown/BL for the Blacklist of Internet Advertisers, a list of notorious spammers. Verify spammers' e-mail addresses at www.blighty.com/spam/spade.html. Send angry e-mail regarding spam to the FTC at uce@ftc.gov/ or to the Network Abuse Clearinghouse at www.abuse.net/. Find out more about the lawmakers' attempts to regulate spam at host1.jmls.edu/cuber/statutes/email/. Find out where spammers lurk at www.fmp.com/spam_patrol/tracking.html. Send junk spam to spamrecycle@ChooseYourMail.com; these guys forward it to the FTC and anti-spam Internet organizations. You even get the opportunity to get a $5-off coupon from CDNow as a thank-you (at least, you used to). You can also send it to the anti-spam folks at hoaxcheck@hoaxkill.com/. You can sign up to be on a no-spam address list at mentalhelp.net/articles.junke.htm, but don't be surprised if the spammers keep slamming you. Additionally, a plethora of anti-spam goodies are out there: see the anti-spam listings in the Shareware E-Mail section for up-to-date listings. You can encrypt your own e-mail sendings with Secure MIME encryption; details at www.rsa.com/. Neat spam-beating tricks are also online at www.erols.com/dtoombs/spam.htm. Other Web sites that keep tabs on the efforts to eradicate spam are www.zdnet.com/pccomp/interdot/idot297/, ZDNet's entry in the anti-spam wars; www.earthlink.net/spam/, www.mmgco.com/nospam/, www.mindspring.com/~aegreene/eudora/no-spam.htm, and headlines.yahoo.com/Full_Coverage/Tech/ Spam_Wars/. Remember, filtering programs are not perfect -- they can and will filter mail that you might want to see. It pays to eyeball the filtered mailings before tossing them in the dustbin. Other ways to beat back spam: if your ISP provides you with multiple accounts, reserve one account for Web surfing only and don't have anyone send you mail there. (Web sites that ask you for your e-mail address can have the address - you don't use it!) Any mail you do receive is spam and can be deleted. For users who have an unusually high need for e-mail privacy, consider using encryption and digital signature protocols. The best third-party encryption utility is probably PGP for Personal Privacy 6.5.2a, a $40 utility available from www.mcafee.com/ or free for personal use from web.mit.edu/network/pgp.html. New info on the anti-spam circuit: several major ISPs, including AT&T, Concentric, EarthLink, and USA.Net, have implemented technology from Bright Light Technologies, called Bright Mail Anti-Spam Service, to efficiently block spam, available to any POP3 user for free from www.brightmail.com/. AOL and WebTV users, Bright Mail isn't compliant for your e-mail client yet. For $15 a year, SpamCop at spamcop.net/ will parse spam headers for you, tracking the origin of the spam, and compose a letter of complaint for you to send to the spammer's ISP. Spam Motel at www.spammotel.com/ provides a similar service.

How do you know if it's spam? Well, usually you don't have any problem identifying the sludge that keeps oozing into your box, but if you're not sure, here are some clues, and some solutions:

• A phony subject line is a dead giveaway. Random characters fool filtering software, as do bogus subject lines such as "Re: Your Order" or "Hi there!" Using specific keywords to filter spam rather than entire subject lines is a partial workaround.

• Dictionary spam: If your "To" field is crowded with e-mail addresses containing names similar to yours, you're the proud recipient of a piece of spam that was sent to everyone in the spammer's address files. One way to lessen this one is to include underscores, hyphens, or extraneous alphanumeric characters to your e-mail address, say myname_96@fubar.com instead of myname@fubar.com.

• Spurious content is a dead giveaway. These aren't easy to filter.

• Bogus unsubscribe links are popular. Respond to these and you'll get even more spam. If you don't know the company sending you the spam, don't take the chance of responding to the unsubscribe link. Just junk it.

• Secret scripts: some HTML e-mails contain JavaScript that launches your browser and loads a page, often with objectionable ad content. Disabling your e-mail client's HTML capability is the easiest way to handle this one, but Outlook users can't do that.

• Fake return addresses are a spam staple. Usually spam contains randomly generated false e-mail addresses for their return addressing, and you might even get spam purporting to be from your own account.

• Forged headers are a classic. How do you tell? Those of us who know about headers can pore through the header info to nail down the spammers, but the rest of us don't have a clue.

Two proposed federal bills -- the C.A.N. (Controlling the Assault of Non-solicited Pornography and Marketing) Spam Act, and the Unsolicited Commercial Electronic Mail Act, would set national standards for mass-distributed, unsolicited e-mails, requiring return addresses and opt-out policies.

One way to b!tch-slap the spammers is to dig out their IP addresses and turn their flabby butts in. How? In the spam headers, look for IP addresses (strings of four numbers of 1-3 digits separated by periods, none larger than 255) or domain names inside the parentheses of the header's Received lines. Spammers routinely fake the addresses outside the lines. Read the Received lines from bottom to top to trace the route the spam traveled to get to you. Go to www.samspade.org/ and use the Acme Address Verifier to verify the IP address. Then rat 'em out at www.abuse.net, hoaxcheck@hoaxkill.com, or zikzak.zikzak.net/~acb/features/anti-spam-howto.html. The good news is that the federal government is considering legislation that would let spammees sue spammers for $500 per instance, as well as empowering the FCC to fine known spammers for dumping their swill into our e-mail accounts. Another bill, the "Can Spam Act," would ban spam altogether, although many reputable online merchants are labeling this bill as too restrictive. Several states, including Maryland and Washington, have anti-spam laws on the books. Locating spammers yourself is, well, possible. The Codex at www.thecodex.com has a wealth of information available on how to dig up the identities of just about anyone out there. If you can get a phone number, you can use a reverse look-up to find the number's listing: try www.anywho.com/telq.html. Some unscrupulous types, including spammers and obscene phone-callers, use pay phones; find the location by going to The Payphone Project at sorabji.com/livewire/payphones.

SpamRecycle, at www.spamrecycle.com/, forwards all received spam to the appropriate U.S. state representatives to prod them into action. The person who provided me with this tip also labels his email with his state abbreviation first, then UCE and the subject line from the spam. He also includes the "Source" page with headers and cc's the mail to abuse@ the offending ISP. He claims his spam has dropped about 70%. Worth a try!

Set yourself up with a "throwaway" e-mail account to thwart spammers and other nosy Nellies. Now, when you have to fill out forms or provide your e-mail address, you can give them the "throwaway" instead of the one that leads directly back to you. Online services like AOL allow multiple user names; you could use one of these. Or you could set up a "freemail" account with one of the providers listed above. Another option is MailShell (www.mailshell.com), a $35/year service which uses dummy e-mail addresses to foil the spammers.

Here's a particular obnoxious bit from eBay, who decided that their members who were opting out of receiving spam were just misguided. By the way, this is a direct quote.

"Several times a month, eBay sends out valuable e-mail communications with news, offers, and special events that help you buy and sell. Unfortunately, we have noticed that an error occurred during your registration process that prevented you from receiving these communications. Many of your Notification Preference defaults were set to no rather than yes.... Therefore, on 1/8/01, we returned all your Notification Preferences to the standard default of yes to put you in line with the rest of the eBay company."

Insulting? Presumptuous? I think so.