So you see, spammer begins with a list of email addresses which are not validated. They are simply known to not have returned a bounce message (an error indicating an email account did not exist). However, what is not known is that a human being is actually reading mail from that mailbox.

The problem with responding is that you validate for spammer that a human exists at that email address. This increases value of your email address by many times. A smart spammer can actually sell these verified addresses to collections of "clean" lists.

Of course if you actually buy something from spammer you've increased value of your email address to astronomical levels. In this case, you may find yourself added to countless "sucker" lists, receiving countless offers from most obscure places.

Another category of hoaxes involves virus warnings. If you receive information that indicates you can get a computer virus from doing anything except opening an email attachment or running an application, then this is probably false information.

Most computer viruses are spread by users opening email attachments that contain virus. NEVER OPEN AN EMAIL ATTACHMENT THAT YOU ARE NOT EXPECTING. Even if you know sender, make sure attachment is legitimate before opening it. It is much safer to delete any questionable attachments and ask sender to resend them than to assume that sender intended to send that email.

Your best defenses against computer viruses are: 1) caution in downloading programs from questionable sources, 2) regularly scanning your drive with virus protection software, and 3) backing up all your important data to a different drive or media (floppy, Zip or CD-ROM) as soon as possible. By doing all of these, if your system does get infected, you can restore it with a minimum of hassle.

Always check out any offer or information you receive before sending any money or forwarding information to someone else. That way you can rest easy knowing you aren't getting scammed or passing along an urban legend.