6 Things Everyone Needs to Know About E-Mail & Internet

1. No one in Nigeria is going to give you $12 million to help them transfer hundreds of millions of dollars into the U.S.

2. No restaurant or business is giving away free gift cards - not Target, not Applebees - none of them.

3. No bank is going to send you an email and ask you for your account information, your PIN number, or your social security number.

4. No password is completely safe. Strengthen your passwords by including upper and lower case letters, at least one number, and at least one punctuation mark, particularly for online banking or credit account access.

5. If you have a facebook or myspace account, don't post any personal information that you don't want the whole world to know, such as your email address, your real address, or your phone number.

6. Any email you are not expecting should be treated as suspicious, even if it's from someone you know. If you ever get an email from, for example, me, with a subject line of, "You've GOT to see this!" or "This is the funniest thing I've ever seen" - DON'T open it. (And by the way, don't be offended if you send me something and I don't open it - if I'm not sure it's safe, I don't open it. And neither should you.)

And always remember, if you want to check out a story before passing it along, just go to snopes.com and type what you are looking for in their search box. More often than not, you will discover the truth about that missing girl, the guy who is drugging ladies with perfume samples in parking lots, or the patient who will receive 3 cents for every forwarded email.

Stay safe!