ALKHOBAR, 28 May — I have begun receiving spam or mass junk e-mailings at my primary e-mail and I am very angry. Unlimited porn does not interest me. I do not need a new mortgage, another credit card or a condo in Bermuda. There is no time in my schedule to chat with anyone named, “Cindy” “Bambi” or “Marilyn.” Last but not least, I swear that I will never transfer money to any bank account in Nigeria, South Africa or Burkina Faso.

At first, I couldn’t figure out why I was suddenly receiving so much ugly mail at my primary e-mail address. I have been protective of my primary e-mail account. I don’t list it publicly. I don’t give it to everyone I meet. But I’ve noticed that lately some of my business acquaintances, colleagues and friends have been careless with my primary mail address. They have been using it in mass mailings that they send out to hundreds of people in their address books. They have not been hiding my e-mail address by using “blind carbon copy” or “BCC” and now I am getting all sorts of trash in my primary mailbox.

Here’s an example. A man named Amr, who I don’t know, sent 13 people in his address book a chain letter. This is what it read:

“Subject: FW: THIS IS FOR REAL. IT WAS ON THE NEWS LAST NIGHT.

“Dear all, Please pass this on — it could be worth a fortune for a few seconds... Please do not take this for a junk letter. Bill Gates is sharing his fortune. If you ignore this you will repent later. Microsoft and AOL are now the largest Internet companies and in an effort to make sure that Internet Explorer remains the most widely used program, Microsoft and AOL are running an e-mail beta test. When you forward this e-mail to friends, Microsoft can and will track it (if you are a Microsoft Windows user) for a two-week time period. For every person that you forward this e-mail to, Microsoft will pay you $245.00. For every person that you sent it to that forwards it on, Microsoft will pay you $243.00 and for every third person that receives it, you will be paid $241.00. Within two weeks, Microsoft will contact you for your address and then send you a check. Regards.”

The mail goes on to claim that a friend received a check for $24,800 and Bill Gates just considers this to be a marketing expense and he can afford it. Get real!

This e-mail is false, fraudulent, fictitious and fake. Everybody, please, try hard to understand that mails like this are fabricated. When something is too good to be true, it is! This mail was created by a cheat, who just wanted to laugh at how much bandwidth would be used by lunatics forwarding the message around. The disaster that happened though is that after this mail went through four forwarding cycles, someone I know received it. She got tempted and stupid, and forwarded it to her entire address book without using BCC. I was horrified when I saw my name and my primary e-mail address in the middle of a list of people I don’t know. Most of these people are probably decent folks, but there are always crazies out there who would love to use my primary mail for some illicit purpose.

I have been sorely tempted to give to a spam service the primary e-mail of every person who uses my primary mail without discretion. Instead, I plan to send them this column as a first warning, and then if they don’t listen I will see to it that their primary inbox is so swamped with disgusting spam that they spend half an hour daily deleting it. That should help to cut down on the amount of time they have available to use my e-mail in forwarding chain letters and other mail stupidities.

This is a serious situation. I have a friend in the Palestinian Independence Movement whose primary e-mail was picked up by the Zionists. Eventually, she had no choice but to shut down that address because her account was overwhelmed with hate letters, viruses and assorted spam. Just a little while after she opened her new account the same situation happened again. Why? Because her “friends” were not careful with her primary e-mail account.

Several of my colleagues, send out their weekly articles to large groups without using BCC or other mail server software. It is only a matter of time before people with opposing views target everyone on those mailing lists. Take my advice.

Don’t give casual acquaintances or news groups your primary e-mail. Create a Hotmail or other throwaway address to distribute. If a friend or business contact lacks discretion in using your primary e-mail, tell them about it. Send them a copy of this article! If the business contact will not desist, forward the mail to that company’s CEO with a complaint. Firms should have e-mail policies, which specify the ways in which their IT resources may be used, and they should always protect the contact information of partners and clients.

The Internet is a great tool but it’s being widely abused. There is an interesting group of statistics at cerberian.com/02products_abusestats.htm. Internet usage, both in the home and office, can be restricted through the installation of filtering software. Just type in “filtering software” at any online search site for a list of dozens of different products — some free. To fight spam, check the information at the site of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (cauce.org) or scambusters. org/stopspam.

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