Living in foreign countries requires us to keep in good communication with our team players on the homefront. In today's age that has made email a vital necessity and convenience, the abuse of the system however is very tiring. To alleviate this susceptibility to virus attacks and SPAM it is best not to use the mainstream products. Through years of experience I have found it helpful to use good "third party" software, as it is targeted and affected less by such attacks. The attackers are always looking for the biggest bang for their buck. Here are some recomendations that should help make your communications a little smoother and more productive.
I have used Eudora for many years with great satisfaction. It is a corporate style product and thus can handle the often-large load of missionary mailings. It is available in 3 levels. The free version can be used without time limit but is limited in features and can handle only one mail account... but it's free. If you want all the features but don't want to pay you can turn on the ad banner. I would caution against this unless you have good/economical Internet connection. Of course you can also pay and receive a registration code. This allows you to have the full function of the program without the ads. I have used the ad version at one point and did not find them offensive, they just used a small portion of my bandwidth. Eudora is also very effective in junking your SPAM as well as 'phishing' emails. It's filter system is also very versatile as well as supporting sending through a relay server so you can keep your account settings the same as you move from country to country. I currently check 24 email addresses and filter all emails based on size, content, subject, sender, recipient etc.
For those who want an even more obscure program I would suggest Courier-Email which is just as functional as Eudora and supports spell checking in several languages. It comes with a 30day free trial after which you must pay to continue using it.
To battle spy-ware there are many capable programs but this is a new area and I hesitate to recommend any as the battle for the best is constantly changing. I personally use Spybot S&D, which is free. Spy Sweeper or Spyware Medic are also good choices. Like virus scanners you need to keep them up to date to make any of them effective.
Finally for those of you who live in countries like mine that have poor Internet connections at best. You are constantly aware of the size of your emails, cost of your connection or maybe you have dropped the wad and purchased a satellite system... big bucks! Either way you are likely wanting a product that will allow you to monitor your connection, whether to keep your costs down, keep from going over your limit, or simply trying to isolate that annoying program (Automatic Updater) that is tying up your connection. A huge help in this area is a little product called DU meter. It has saved our bacon. It monitors your Internet connection (or any other network connection) and shows you if and how much is being transmitted. It will also keep a log of your online times if you are using dial-up. This is very handy if you have to hand in a report of usage at the local guesthouse. It too is available with a 30-day trial. I trust these suggestions will be of help to some of you, they have been to me. If you have any further questions on how to handle Internet / email problems feel free to email me at webmaster@TEAMChad.org.
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