[Webmaster]

Most of our forums are open to the public. Later we’ll add some that are for Members only, but for now, anybody can read forum posts. You just can’t create a forum post or start a thread unless you Register.

So be careful about posting personal information in your forum posts. Spammers may harvest personal information from any forum to send spam emails.

Here’s some helpful information you can use for general Internet security:

Email Security
Use encrypted email. I recommend ProtonMail. It’s free, it’s intuitive and easy to use.

• Your email message is totally encrypted and secure when sent to another Protonmail email address.
• You can send to non-Protonmail addresses all you want, but the message won’t be encrypted. Likewise, if a non-Protonmail sends a message to you, it won’t be encrypted.
• Understand that email subjects are always in the clear. Even with Protonmail. So whatever your subject line says is vulnerable to hackers.  I mean, you’re just asking for it if you send email messages with the subjects like, “My bank checking account password,” LOL.
• Website “Contact Us” forms on websites whose Web addresses start with “https” are secure.  Your message is encrypted. But when the website owner downloads your email, it is not secure.

Secure Web Surfing
ProtonMail also has a VPN or virtual private network that gives you anonymity when surfing the Web. The basic version is free and works great.

Another trick is to bring up a “new private window” in your browser when you don’t want to get tracked as easily.  My daughter put me onto this when surfing for prices on something you want to buy.  Lots of times when on a company’s shopping cart for the first time you may get a nice discount.  But you’ll get cookies on your machine that identifies your computer, and the next time you go back that discount won’t be there– you’ll get quoted the regular price.  This happens especially with airline flight discounts.

If you have any questions about any of this, just ask and I’ll be glad to get back ASAP.

[Author]

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