I recently planned a trip for friends using the internet and now I am being flooded with virus contaminated e-mail with addresses and names the same as the hostals I have contacted. This morning there was one from Hostaladriano@terre.XXXX that looked very authentic. Since I was not expecting an email from them, I checked their actual email site and discovered that the last four letters of the address were incorrect. It is really frustrating because I am afraid that I am deleting important emails from time to time.

Ah yes, sel, this issue frustrates me most. SPAM and VIRUSes.

Kind of like terrorism, NO ONE IS SAFE FROM SPAM. My parents recently called me in distress saying something similar, that they are just now getting SPAM and viruses and they too planned a trip mainly through the internet too.

SO, if one puts their email address ANYWHERE on the internet they are subject to SPAM. There's really no escaping it. The only thing one can do is be cautious as to WHERE the email is entered.

NEVER use your personal/primary email address when doing anything public. Instead, use a free hotmail or yahoo or ozu or whatever email account. I recently had to "shut down" my primary email address of madridman@madridman.com because it gets, now, around 2,000 SPAM and VIRUS-containing emails. Did I check them all? No. No time. Just check and delete.

ALSO, regarding the above, USE a free email account for message boards or entering into mailing lists (mailing lists are suspicious, by the way) or making reservations. Many times.. in fact.. MOST of the time reservations made on online reservation forms ARE NOT MADE ON SECURE SERVERS (NEVER enter a credit card number on a NON secure server - and some lodging establishments "force" you to do this on NON-secure server pages) are subject to some kind of spyware and your email address MAY be "harvested".

If you use a FREE email account you can check it online and GREATLY reduce the likelihood that your computer will be infected VIRUSES.

I also strongly suggest, if possible, checking all person/primary email ONLINE through the ISPs online mail server. It's not available through all ISPs but by doing this, once again, you GREATLY reduce the risk of infection and you can simply check and delete those which aren't familiar to you or are suspicious. This is what I do now... EXCLUSIVELY. If you check them via the leaky Microsoft Express email program or even the more secure Eurdora email programs you'll still be DOWNLOADING virus-containing emails and then your virus protection program will have to secure it from the rest of your information on your computer.

Virus and SPAM is getting worse on the internet. There's no way to hide from it other than to keep changing email addresses. But who wants to do that?! Kind of defeats the purpose, doesn't it.

Saludos, MadridMan