It hasn’t been easy. I’m not sure if it is just a stroke of bad luck or my purple thumb, but tomatoes are one of the darned crankiest plants I’ve ever met. Floods, then heat, decimated my first two crops. My third survived but refused to produce. My Better Boy tomato plant has the dubious distinction of being perhaps the oldest tomato plant in San Antonio that has never produced a tomato. Meanwhile my producing (although not prolific) grape tomato vines are losing a battle against spider mites. We’ve just called a fence man to replace our rotting fence, and the tomatoes will likely get trampled when the fence work is done. Pardon me while I don’t grieve. Meanwhile, I’m busy mixing up homemade potions to battle white powdery mildew on my Crape Myrtles, and trying to figure out what kind of critter trampled my Purple Hearts.

Dragging indoors, drenched with sweat, itching from mosquito bites and covered with dirt, I look forward to a shower and a cool respite front of my computer surfing the web. I then realize that more pests beset my computer than my garden. The Internet has become a virtual minefield of Spam, Viruses, Worms, Trojan Horses and Pop-up ads.

Our national government, fifty state governments and countless businesses, including Big Brother Microsoft have proposed solutions the problem of Internet Pests, hoping to curb this blight on Internet commerce. The stakes are high here. If Internet’s constituents are not relieved of this constant onslaught, the inevitable consequence is erosion of consumer confidence and a resultant slowing of Internet commerce.

Consider Pop-up ads. Once the exclusive domain of the pornography, gambling and the prescription-drug lunatic fringe, pop-up ads were recently embraced by name brand businesses such as Sprint and Orbitz. Does that make them any more acceptable or less annoying? Most pop-up ads are made possible by spyware, software installed on your computer when you download some other program such as weather watch services, specialized toolbars, music sharing programs or screen savers. Name brand businesses claim that they ask before installing the software, although many admit that the request is buried in fine print. The fringe elements just install it surreptitiously. Recently Turbo Tax got a lot of bad press because it installed spyware along with its software without any warning to the consumer. Considering the sensitive nature of Income Tax returns this issue caused a small panic and created a windfall for its rival, TaxCut.

Like spammers, poppers (my name for businesses that bombard you with pop-up ads) hold all the aces in the deck. Our state and federal governments can’t touch them because

• most of them are outside the U. S., and
• those in the U. S. don’t care what the law is anyway.

The federal government has admitted that a no-spam list could not possibly work like the enormously successful “Do Not Call” list. Spammers, have the advantage of anonymity. Add that to their disregard for law and privacy, and most spammers would use the “no spam” list as a source for new target e-mail addresses.

If governments and businesses are powerless to stop spammers, poppers and other pests, is the Internet doomed to wallow in an ever-growing cesspool of junk? My educated guess is “No”.  There is one power even spammers and poppers cannot overrule. That is you—the potential customer. The Internet’s power lies in the fact that it is a democracy. Everyone has a vote. On the Internet you vote with your mouse.

With your “vote” you can demonstrate that you refuse to become a charlatan’s customer, read their ads or allow them use your hard drive to store their garbage. Once these annoying pests discover that their tactics are getting them nowhere, the spam and popup empire will collapse and we can again enjoy some vestige of privacy. If you follow these suggestions, you can guard your computer against viruses and scams at the same time. In other words, you can cast your vote with your mouse.

• NEVER respond to an unsolicited e-mail advertisement.
• If you get what you think is an opt-in e-mail from a legitimate business, don’t click the online link in the e-mail. If you absolutely must have the red linen jacket from Eddie Bauer, open your browser yourself and access the Eddie Bauer site manually.
• If you get an e-mail with a cryptic subject line and you don’t recognize the source, delete the e-mail without opening it.
• If you get an e-mail with an attachment from someone you don’t recognize, delete it without opening it.
• If you get an e-mail with an attachment, from a friend, and the subject line does not sufficiently explain the attachment, create a NEW message (not a reply) to the friend and ask them about this attachment before you open the e-mail with the attachment.
• If you have two methods to access your mail (such as webmail and Outlook), use the web mail option to check your mail while it is still on the server. Go through and delete all the obvious spam and suspicious mail before you open Outlook.
• Turn off some of the automatic features on your mail program. For example, set Outlook so that it does not automatically send and receive mail when you open it (use the send/receive button instead—this will also speed up the opening.) Turn off Outlook’s preview screen and add junk mailers and suspicious correspondents to your “Blocked Senders” list.
• Get a filter program such as Mailwasher. Mailwasher sits between your server and your mail program and allows you to bounce unwanted e-mails and blacklist the sender. It also allows you to delete (and surreptitiously preview) messages before they reach your mail program.
• Use a name-brand spam program. Some of the fly-by-nights anti-spam programs actually generate spam instead of preventing it. NEVER buy an anti-spam program advertised in a pop-up ad!
• If a popup ad appears, close it immediately and install a spyware removal program such as Ad-aware or PestPatrol. Use and update this program regularly to remove spyware that accumulates on your hard drive.
• Keep your virus software up to date. Set your virus software to scan incoming and outgoing messages and to scan your hard drive on a regular (preferably weekly) basis.
• Keep your operating system up to date, installing any patches recommended by the vendor (usually Microsoft.)

I must advise my readers that I follow these rules religiously. Therefore, if you write to me, please include a reference to PC Alamode so I don’t mistakenly delete your mail. If you write me and I don’t respond within a couple of weeks, please re-send the mail with a subject line that includes reference to “PC Alamode.”