It will just confirm to the evil spammers that your address is live, and cause you to get even more spam. Despite the fact that the US's CAN-SPAM Act requires junk mailers to include a genuine opt-out link, many are ignoring the true purpose of the law (to give consumers choice in what rubbish they accept in their in boxes) and instead turning it to nefarious advantage.

So ignore the blight - don’t open, don’t click - hit delete.

Outside the US you are probably on your own, legislation wise, so you need to help yourself in any event.

Multiple vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer, and Excel have been recently disclosed. Does it ever end?

Get over your understandable reticence to allow Microsoft into your home, except as absolutely necessary – and download the latest ‘update’ – euphemism for a fix to a truly hideous problem that should never have arisen in the first place. read more

The remaining 49.2 per cent of Windows users are not helped by SP2. Thus, a huge number of users who bought Windows software in good faith are left out in the cold, unless prepared to throw more good money after bad.

Makes you wonder what you paid for in the first place?

See the Home Users section on protecting yourself as a mere mortal.

To all you frustrated, under appreciated security programmers and developers out there in your Dogbert infested pens, now is your chance to do something noble for mankind.

Send us your ideas for Tip of the Week and we will publish the best. It must be in language that your granny would understand and be able to follow. Assuming your granny is not an MIT graduate.

We are trying to build a body of knowledge that helps the average user, as well as more sophisticated folk who already have wads of techno babble infested sites to turn to.

We believe the average user gets little help from anyone, and we sorely need his or her co-operation to secure cyberspace. The vendors try to communicate with them, but don’t seem to comprehend how truly mystified the well- educated (non lunk headed) user really is. They make a lot of ill judged assumptions about what people know, and as a result the message falls flat.

Bill Gates supposedly once said ‘ we don’t talk to end users’.

Needless to say, that far sighted strategic insight has long died a death and Microsoft are positively falling over themselves to get down and dirty with the common man, or woman, as the case may be.

So keep it simple. An ABC of ‘what to do, how to do it, or what to look out for’ is particularly useful.

Remember- you may not be appreciated in your pen, but you can be in cyberspace.