5.1 Safe practice relating to the use of ICT for communication

Table of Contents

1. Using ICT for communication
   1. Electronic mail
   2. Setting up e-mail accounts
   3. Free e-mail services
   4. Sending and receiving e-mails
   5. Using attached files
   6. Size of attached files
   7. Using zipped files
   8. Virus checking
   9. Implementing virus checking
   10. Anti-virus software
   11. Managing e-mails
   12. E-mail folders
   13. Combating Spam
   14. E-mail etiquette
   15. Netiquette
   16. Using news groups
   17. E-mailing multiple recipients
   18. Closing an e-mail account
   19. Using chat rooms
   20. Acceptable practice in chat rooms
   21. More about chat rooms
   22. Secure servers
   23. Scanning and saving images

Using news groups

When using news groups there is a protocol in replying to the various discussions/threads:

• make sure that you are using the correct news group
• make sure that you really mean to reply to the whole group and not just send a personal message to an individual member
• always reply to the correct thread
• sending the same message to several groups (cross posting) is frowned upon.

Clients should be warned that they should always think very carefully before posting a message to a public newsgroup. There are group archives (eg: http://groups.google.com) which store every message ever posted, so a message can have a potential lifespan of many years and could be seen by millions of people! Once a message is posted there is no way of retracting it.

Sometimes clients will want to send an e-mail to several people at the same time, so we'll look next at Sending e-mail to multiple recipients...