A Not For Profit Interlocal Cooperative of Oklahoma K12 School Districts

The holiday season has arrived and many of us are shopping on line and sending holiday cheer email to our families and friends. This time of year is also one of the worst for unwanted email-spam. The bad guys are very busy.

So how bad is the spam? The chart below shows the amount of email NewNet 66 schools processed during the last six months and how much was declared spam and blocked from entering our schools email boxes. While the numbers may seem high, they do represent averages world wide. The bottom line.... 85 to 90 percent of all email on the Internet is spam and a significant amount of that contains exploits that can infect your computer and steel personal information.

There is not much you can do as an individual to reduce the global quantity of spam but there are some basic guidelines you can observe in order to protect yourself.

~ Don't open email from people you don't know. Even if you know the person sending the email and it looks strange or out of character for that person, delete it.

~ Make sure you update your operating system. Failure to apply patches will increase your risk for exploits.

~ Watch out for those "Holiday Greeting Cards." Many contain exploits or a link to a web site that contains an exploit and they look like they are being sent by someone you know.

~ Think Before You Click! Use common sense.

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