E-mail is a great way to communicate with friends, family, potential customers, colleagues, and the list goes on. It has many benefits: In an instant we are able to send a message to one or many people at once, it doesn't cost anything, and you can include pictures, audio, or video clips with them.

Thanks to PDAs, cell phones, notebooks, etc. We are able to to stay connected to our business and never miss an important message while we are away from our home or office.

With all of these conveniences comes much responsibility of the sender and recipients of e-mail.

Believe it or not, unfortunately, not everyone who sends you an e-mail is your friend. There are some people who's intention is to cause harm to your computer or they may have some other malicious intent. These people may attach a virus to an e-mail and send it to you or even worse, they may also access all of your contacts in your address book and send a virus to them!

As an e-mail recipient, you can prevent being a victim of an attack by not opening e-mails from anyone that you do not know; instead, delete them immediately. Also, make sure that you have an anti-virus program such as Norton or McAfee installed on your computer.

As a sender of e-mail, there are some rules that you should adhere to when sending them. First, if you are at work, get familiar with your employer's e-mail policy. The best advice to follow is not to use your business e-mail to send personal messages. Not following this could put you in violation of your employer's e-mail policy which could lead to disciplinary action or possibly even termination.

Every time we send an e-mail, there are usually three items that we see on our computer screens that look something like this “To: CC: BCC:” Ever wonder what that is? Well, the first is the place where we enter the recipients e-mail address. I am sure that you already knew that. The second is where we enter additional recipients along with our original one, CC is an acronym for carbon copy. The BCC stands for blind carbon copy. If you are sending e-mail to a group of people, and you do not want the e-mail addresses seen by everyone who receives the e-mail, enter the additional e-mail addresses in the the blind carbon copy field, or BCC field. This will protect the other e-mail addresses from people who grab them from the e-mails which may help to prevent spam (unsolicited e-mail). If this is not an issue, feel free to enter all of the recipient e-mail addresses in the To and CC fields.

In conclusion, we all have responsibilities when it comes to e-mail. Make sure that you understand them and adhere to any rules, particularly that your employer may have concerning e-mail. Protecting your computer by the use of an anti-virus program is an effective way to help prevent damage from a virus. Finally protect the e-mail addresses of your friends, family, and colleagues by using the BCC feature when sending an e-mail to a group of people. They would appreciate the fact that you kept their e-mail private which may help to prevent them from receiving spam.