Most people haven’t a clue about how to use their email system to avoid collecting spam and viruses. Here are a few pointers from WWOOF technical support.
1) Make sure that the subject of your email is something recognisable to your recipient. Sending messages titled “hello” or “hi” are just asking to get lost. Many offices bin all messages that are not clearly recognisable as not being spam. WWOOF gets around 600 spam emails a day, most of which get filtered out without being read.

2) Don’t send emails to long lists of people. When you do this, you are exposing all your friends’ emails to viruses and spam. If you have to send a message to more than one person, use the BCC (blind carbon copy) facility which keeps the email addresses hidden from view.
4) Don’t send attachments in any format that can act as a virus carrier. One of the most common is Microsoft WORD documents (DOC). Such documents can contain macros which can be viruses. WORD documents are a proprietary format that your recipient may not be able to read. You are also encouraging the stranglehold of Microsoft’s dominance. If you have to send WORD documents, first save the document as (Save As) an RTF file, but really if you want to sent text to someone just send it as an e-mail
5) Never open attachments unless you know who is sending you them and what they contain.
6) Never under any circumstances open a WORD or EXE attachment directly. Always use a viewer that disables any programs that may be hidden within. WORD documents can be opened with WordPad, which is a simple viewer.
7) Don’t send attachments at all until you have cleared with the recipients that they are ready to receive them. Send a short message first and then detail exactly what you are sending. Many offices never open attachments.
8) If you have a website, don’t put your email address on it. Spiders roam the internet and pick these up, using them to generate spam. There are ways around having your address exposed on your website – get advice from a website designer.
9) Never respond to spam by asking to be removed from their mailing list. All this does is confirm to the spam sender that your email address is valid and your spam problem will get worse.