It was too early for Melanie to congratulate herself because the aliens would always be after her. They would always be looking over her shoulder, keeping track of what she did, trying to read her mind…

Melanie rolled around in bed and looked at her digital clock. It read: 7:39

She groaned to herself. That must mean it was time…

She got out of bed and looked around her room. Everything seemed normal. The sun appeared to be bright as it flooded through her window with the red curtains. Her clinical psychology text books on her desk were exactly where she remembered putting them. Her bed was in the correct position along the wall.

She deliberately avoided looking at the mirror.

She was safe for now; the aliens hadn’t come for her yet. But she knew her neighbor was a Russian spy so it was only a matter of time before he told the aliens about the key she had found…

…the key she had safely hidden under her bed in a Cheerios cereal box. No one could find it there.

Melanie carefully examined the floor she would walk on. She was certain it was safe to walk, but those aliens really knew how to set booby traps. She really had to be prudent-or else!

She carefully placed her foot on the carpet. The carpet had a collage of various, colored squares on it. Aliens always had a hard time getting into her room, but they had implanted sensors under the floor that sent them a signal every time she stepped on the red squares. They did this so they could tell how often Melanie was in her room.

But Melanie had figured out a way how to fight them. If she just avoided those red squares, they would never know.

Stepping on her toes, she tiptoed around the red squares and reached the other side of the room. She carefully checked the books on the desk, the position of her bed, the window and the curtains-avoided the mirror-and then came out of the room.

She quietly pulled her door shut and peeked over her shoulder down the hall.

Oh no! There were too many mirrors!

The mirrors stretched along the wall on either side, disrupted only by the occasional bedroom door. But there were only supposed to be one of them between the master bedroom door and the bathroom.

Hmmm; could this be the aliens?

In any case, she had to avoid the mirrors – the aliens must NOT find out about the key!

She got onto her hands and knees. If she could just slide under the line of the mirrors, she would be safe. Thus she scrambled to the other side, carefully avoiding the red squares on the carpet, and finally got up on her feet at the end of the hall.

It was too early for Melanie to congratulate herself because the aliens would always be after her. They would always be looking over her shoulder, keeping track of what she did, trying to read her mind… Oh no, she hadn’t thought about that! How should she protect her mind?

She would stick it out as long as she could. There was no way she would allow those aliens to get the key! Not while she was still alive.

She had to eat though, or else how could she have the strength to protect the key?

Melanie opened the cereal cupboard and confronted a bunch of boxes. There were Cheerios, Honeycombs, Pops, Fruit Loops, Apple Jacks and many more.

Pleased with the variety, she reached for the Cheerios.

Oh no!

She remembered something.

Last night, she had seen only Honeycombs in the cupboard. Yes, she’d Melanie had gone out with her mother, and they’d only bought Honeycombs. Where did all the others come from?

How could she not have understood? It was the aliens. They must know she had hidden the key in a cereal box. But they didn’t know which one, did they? So they put a bunch of cereal boxes here to see which one she would pick.

But Melanie would not lose!

“Oooooo!” she cooed loudly. “We have Honeycombs! Yum! I love Honeycombs!”

And that’s what she got out of the cupboard and put on the kitchen island. She had to distract the aliens.

She got out her bowl-not the red one; you could never be too careful-and a spoon. These she laid down beside the cereal box. When she had retrieved the milk from the fridge however, things had changed.

There were five sets of bowls and spoons on the island!

She calmed herself down.

This had happened before. It was the aliens’ way of saying they knew she was lying to them.

But she could always get around it.

She touched the first bowl and her finger slipped right through it. Nope, not this one.

Her fingers slipped through the second one but jammed into the third. Hah! That one was the right one.

She poured her cereal and milk into it. Suspiciously, the remaining two bowls somehow filled themselves.

But everything was alright. It didn’t matter how hard those aliens would try to intimidate her, she would be strong.

However, she was very sad. She didn’t realize at the time, but before she found the key – before the aliens and the Russian neighbor – everything had been so easy, so safe.

It was hard to appreciate a good thing when its loss was unimaginable. She had never believed in aliens and now they were in her life, changing things, manipulating her. They were always there.

Her breakfast finished, she finally pulled herself together. It would be alright. Everything would be alright. She was sure of it now.

As she re-entered the hallway, she saw that the mirrors were gone. There was only one, exactly between the master bedroom and the bathroom.

Before entering the bathroom, Melanie paused and looked at herself in the mirror. There was a snake coiled around her temple.

She instinctively reached up but couldn’t feel it.

“You’re not real,” She said to it. “No, none of it is real… the key? The aliens?”

The snake in the mirror bobbed its head in a nod.

It was a wonder why anyone would believe only what they could see when Melanie had to doubt everything in her life.

Something caught her attention and the recognition of her illness faded instantly from her mind. There was red smoke coming from her bedroom.

Oh no, the aliens must know! They must have understood about the Cheerios cereal box!

Original Article: Lewis, G.D. et al., Science Translational Medicine 2, 33 (2010).

Visits to biochemistry labs are frequent in our lives. Often we give blood to know levels of different metabolites, such as glucose or cholesterol. Instead of looking at a handful of metabolites, a group of scientists from Harvard Medical School has screened more than 200 metabolites before and after exercise. Interestingly, the levels of 21 of these metabolites changed significantly following exercise. The study also showed significant differences between physically more fit and less fit individuals after exercise. Following exercise, more fit people had greater increases in the biological markers of fat-burning and had decreased oxidative stress -a state where the balance between oxidants and antioxidants shift towards damaging oxidant side. Hence, fit people can get better results following exercise by efficiently removing waste materials. Moreover, exercise increased the levels of “niacinamide”, a compound which modulates insulin sensitivity. This increase was more prominent in leaner individuals and was maximized in fast marathon runners after exercise. It has been long known that obese and less-active individuals had greater tendencies to develop Type II diabetes where insulin action is impaired due to decreased sensitivity of the body to this molecule. Understanding the biochemistry behind the exercise may lead to identification of small molecules mediating its beneficial effects. These molecules may then be used to boost up metabolism or treat diseases. Until then, it is best to exercise and stay fit.

2- Our scents make us targets

Original Article: Carey, A.F. et al., Nature 464, 66 (2010).

Are you avoiding spending time outdoors in summer evenings because most of your time has to be spent chasing away the unwelcomed attention of mosquitoes? If so, then you must be one of those “lucky” people whose perspiration contains a key chemical that makes you irresistible to the six-legged bug. Scientists at Yale University have identified a key chemical compound that is detected by one of the mosquitoes’ 27 smell-receptors in their antenna. These smell-receptors are tuned to detect the key chemicals from hundreds of meters away which make people who secrete large amounts of these key chemicals in their sweat vulnerable to frequent mosquito attacks. Depending on the species, usually only the female mosquitoes bite humans, mainly on their feet or lower legs. More importantly, mosquitoes carry several deadly diseases such as Malaria and West-Nile dengue fever. In fact, Malaria is one of the deadliest and the most neglected diseases, affecting more than 500 million people and killing more than 3 million every year, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. Sadly, the majority of deaths occur among children. Therefore, these types of studies, far from being trivial, may in fact lead to a better understanding of those mosquito-borne diseases, and hopefully may lead to the production of more effective drugs both for the prevention and the cure of diseases as well as better mosquito repellents and traps.

3- We are not alone in our body: Genomes of microbes living with us

Original Articles: Qin, J. et al., Nature 464, 59 (2010) & The Human Microbiome Jumpstart Reference Strains Consortium, Science 328, 994 (2010).

New advancements in DNA sequencing technology allow scientists to sequence genomes of microorganism living in their natural habitat. Human body contains roughly ten times as many microbes as human cells. As part of Human Microbiome Project, scientists are decoding the DNA sequences of all microbes living in several parts of our body such as skin, mouth, gut, respiratory tract and urogenital tract. Two independent teams from US and Europe have produced the first results of DNA sequences of microbes living with us. The projects have initially focused on bacterial genomes but intent to sequence viral and fungal genomes as well. The US team has generated a set of 178 bacterial reference genomes and is aiming to generate many more. In the second project funded by European Union, scientists sequenced the entire microbial DNA in the gut instead of sequencing them individually. They have sequenced more than 3 million bacterial genes, nearly 150 times more than our own (humans have only ~20 thousand genes). Importantly they have found that bacterial species are different in healthy individuals compared to the individuals with inflammatory bowel disease. Throughout these projects, scientists are trying to reveal significant information about the role of different microbial species in health and disease states.

4- Seeing with the sound

Original Article: Yovel Y et al., Science 327, 701 (2010).

Bats, dolphins, shrews and swiftlets use sound waves for navigation and hunting. They emit short sonar pulses and listen to the echoes reflecting back from solid objects. Microsecond differences in the arrival times of echoes are coded by detector neurons and used as a main cue for positioning objects in an environment. This phenomenon is known as biosonar. A recent study published in Science reveals one unknown part of this perfect sound processing strategy. The study shows that bats do not center the sonar beam on the target. Instead, they aim to match the maximum slope of the beam to the target in order to increase the signal-to- noise ratio. Around the sharp edge, small variations of the target position can be detected as a clear signal change in reflected sound intensity. Furthermore, the researchers showed that if the environment is very noisy, bats could bias this critical point to increase amplitude of the echoes. As it turns, this powerful technique has already been employed by humans in engineering and used in various technological tools such as atomic force microcopy. Whether this strategy is used in general by other echolocating animals remains to be answered.

Cryptography mainly aims to save information and to transfer messages to recipients safely. Cryptography can change a message into a complicated form by applying several different methods. Encoded information can be resolved only when the receiver applies specific methods to it. Not only does computer cryptography render communication secure but it also gives users secure access to servers.

Nowadays, cryptography is becoming more and more significant, especially now people transfer their personal, commercial, military or political information to each other on internet. It is easy for someone to get personal information through online shopping sites which are very common today. Therefore, credit card information entered into the website is converted into unintelligible characters through an encryption method so that the credit card number can be transmitted to the server securely. Then, the server can easily retrieve the original form of the credit card number using decryption.

The encryption algorithm includes essential elements known as the “key.” Protection of the key is always vital for information security.

History of Cryptography

To find the first examples of cryptography one needs to go back more than 4,000 years in history. For instance, in 2000 BCE the ancient Egyptians used hieroglyphs on the gravestones of their kings to describe their achievements when they were alive. Eventually, the system of hieroglyphs grew too complex to understand. Then people began to use it for encoding. Similarly, Chinese people used ideography, which conveys ideas through symbols, to hide the meaning of words.

There are also encoding examples from ancient Mesopotamia that have similar aspects to those used in Egypt. The Roman emperor Julius Caesar used a type of encryption technique called the “Caesar cipher” in which each letter in the plain text is replaced by a letter some fixed number of positions down the alphabet. In the Middle Ages cryptography received a lot of attention from many nations, especially in Europe. In recent years, many different methods have been developed in this field. Therefore, the classical methods are not as useful as they were in the past, especially since the 1970s. Today, more complex mathematical methods have replaced the classical methods of cryptography.

The Arabs were the first to make successful studies of how to decode encrypted messages. Ahmad al-Qalqashandi of Egypt (1355–1418) developed an encryption method which is still used today. This technique is based on a theory of language stability which explores the distribution and frequency of the words in a text. With this method, the frequency of the characters within the encrypted text is compared to the frequency standards in the language; in this way, it is determined what an encoded letter really stands for.

This method is used successfully in decoding messages encrypted by the mono-alphabetic method, which is based on sliding or replacement of a letter by another one.

In 1931, the French obtained documents from a German spy which showed the functions of a code named “Enigma” that was going to be used in World War II by the Germans. British mathematicians were then able to decipher the code during the war. Thus, the commands of Hitler could be learned immediately by the Allied Powers. The Allied countries won the war because of their access to the decryption technique. Likewise, the American army gained victory over the Japanese in the Pacific War in the 1940s because American decryption experts, along with their British and Dutch colleagues, were able to decode the system called JN-25 which was being used by the Japanese army.

Technological developments in computer science have enabled us to decode even previously unbreakable ciphers. For instance, an encrypted message which was created in 1977 and which, it was thought could be decoded only 40 quadrillion years later with the help of an algorithm that analyses the known large numbers into their factors, was actually decoded seventeen years later in 1994.

Classical and modern cryptography

Cryptographic methods are divided into two categories: classical and modern. In the classical method, encoding can be done by consistent replacement of a letter by another letter in the same alphabet. For example, if we replace each letter in the word FOUNTAIN by the third following letter it changes into IRXQWDLQ. It can also be done by replacement of a word with another one or replacement of a character by another character. Of course, the recipient of the message must be the only person who knows the decryption method. In that way, for example, the unintelligible word above can easily be changed back to its original form by replacing each word by the letter three places before it in the alphabet. Such encrypted messages can only be decoded by linguistic analyses or after numerous trials. The classical method was invented hundred of years ago, and it has been used since then. Although this method is so simple that it can even be used manually, computers are the only devices which can have maximum security as well as very long keys and complex algorithms for the modern technique.

The “Spartan cylinder” is another device used in the classical method. A message is written on a piece of paper rolled around a cylinder with a known diameter. The encrypted message is then detached from the cylinder and sent. The only way to decipher the message is to have a cylinder of the same diameter. If the unrolled paper is re-rolled around a decoding cylinder properly, then the original message is obtained. This method is known to have been used by the Spartans around 600 BCE.

One modern method is called Public-Key Cryptography. In this form of cryptography, the key used to encrypt a message differs from the key used to decrypt it. The public key may be widely distributed while the private key is kept secret. Thus, incoming messages are encrypted with the recipient’s public key; yet, they cannot be decrypted except with the recipient’s private key. Hence, the possessor of the private key is the only one who can decrypt the message and read it.

Conversely, in secret-key cryptography, a single secret key is used for both encryption and decryption. One disadvantage of secret-key cryptography is the distribution of the private key since it is always at risk of being acquired by third parties.

If we look at the universe, we can observe similar cryptographic methods in every creation process. For instance, living cells produce protein by deciphering nucleic acids (DNA, RNA), which include encoded genetic information in ribosomes.

The structure of encoded DNA and encryption in protein synthesis

There is divine wisdom in the encoding of DNA and the transference of these codes to ribosomes in the protein-making process. If we compare DNA molecules, which contain the genetic instructions inside living organisms, to a book, the letters in this book can be symbolized by A, T, and G and C. These symbols represent four molecules which are used in the encoding of the genetic program that shapes the basic form of all living organisms. Each human genome is identified with different sums of those letters. For instance, while the sum of genomic letters is approximately 3 billion in mice and human organisms; it is about 4–5 million in a bacteria. Furthermore, when the genome sequences of two humans are compared, the combination difference between the two appears to be only one percent; nevertheless, no human being is exactly like another in appearance.

There are some interesting distinctions between humans and animals in terms of their genome numbers. The various encoding techniques used in DNA are a basic biological mechanism which can also be considered the mystery behind the genetic diversity in the creation of living organisms. If we compare the genome to a program booklet, we can consider the booklet to be a tiny model of the “Manifest Record” (Imam al-Mubin) mentioned in the Qur’an, in which the future lives of all things and beings, including all the principles governing those lives, and all their deeds and the reasons or causes are kept pre-recorded in this world. The instructions and mechanism used in this encoding program are identical in most living beings. This uniformity shows that they are all created by one Almighty being.

Scientists also observe another kind of encoding which helps transmission of the right message to ribosomes during the protein-making process. The main idea is that unlike the base-pairing of DNA, in messenger RNA (mRNA) the complementary base to adenine is not thymine, as it is in DNA, but rather Uracil, and also that every three nucleotides (a codon) carry information of one amino acid. For example, while codons in DNA appear as “AAT, GCC, GAT, GTA,” they appear as “UUA, CGG, CUA, CAU” in mRNA. Here the main goal is not to keep the information safe against the third parties as in normal encryption, but rather to transmit the message properly and preserve the diversity of living beings.

Developments in the area of cryptography do not only provide confidentiality of information, but they also shed light on our understanding of God’s wonderful creation in the world of living creatures. All these extensive and essential practices, including the encoding of the information by the four letters of DNA, proper transmission of this encoded information to the cells, and the necessary synthesis in the cell, prove that the All-Knowing and Omnipotent God has great wisdom in all His actions in the Universe.

References

• Protein Synthesis, http://www.emc.maricopa.edu/faculty/farabee/BIOBK/BioBookPROTSYn.html.
• Selim Aydın, “Gen Haritası Neler Söylüyor?”, Sızıntı, June 2001, no. 269.
• Quantum Cryptography: Privacy Through Uncertainty, October 2002 http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/crypt/overview.php 1.5.2006.
• Larry Petterson, Bruce S. Davie, Computer Networks: A System Approach, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2000, 568–615.

Can we control time?

Some people say yes, we do, some say possibly, but the reality is we do not and we cannot! Time flows without interruption or interception. We grow, we change, we suffer; time laughs at us. And then comes our end, but time never ends… Controlling time could be possible if we were the creator of time. We make watches, clocks, and bell towers to keep track of time, but none of us is capable of stopping it for a second. Time is beyond our dimensions.

Time management methods

Currently there exist several methods to manage time. Everybody, including Dale Carnegie, suggests several different ways of planning for the best agenda.1-3 One of them¹ is to start with a “personal time survey,” and this helps you with a “study-hour formula,” asking you to prepare a daily schedule on a poster board, or some other surface, while suggesting practicing critical behavior:

“Don’t be a perfectionist”

“Learn to say no”

“Learn to prioritize”

“Combine several activities”

And here we give a “personal time survey” which has been presented as a means to oversee your current usage on an hourly basis:

1. The number of hours of sleep each night

________ X 7 = _______

2. The number of grooming hours per day

________ X 7 = _______

3. The number of hours for meals/snacks per day – including preparation time

________ X 7 = _______

4a. The total travel time, weekdays

________ X 5 = _______

4b. The total travel time, weekends

________

5. The number of hours per week for regularly scheduled functions (clubs, worship, get-togethers, etc.) ________

6. The number of hours per day for chores, errands, extra grooming, etc.

________ X 7 = _______

7. The number of hours of work per week

________

8. The number of hours in class per week

________

9. The number of average hours per week socializing.

Be honest! ________

Now add up the totals: ________

Subtract the above number from

168 – ________ =________ 1

What’s wrong with these systems?

Dale Carnegie passed away tragically. Something was missing in his life, leading him to commit suicide, despite being one of the time management experts for a better life. So, what was really important and what was it that he failed to notice?

The most valid explanation is that the spiritual nature of human beings was not taken into account. Such experts seem to think that if we put things in order externally, our lives will be organized and consequently we will be happy. But evidently, we cannot progress without spiritual satisfaction.

Below are the key concepts in perfect time management:

• Priorities

• Careful organization

• Spiritual needs

Priorities

Since time is immutable, we have to adjust ourselves to the speed of time. We have to list what is important for us and categorize them to see if there are possible combinations for extra time savings. It is truly important in such a concept to know our short term and long term goals, without excluding our needs and any dependants. The first priorities list may not work properly, but sooner or later, we will arrive at the optimum schedule.

Careful organization: A successful agenda

Regardless of our professional lives, every one of us needs sufficient time to relax. Thus, a cleverly organized day is what we should work towards first. Most studies show that a morning-afternoon-evening type division is insufficient to prevent the tediousness of long working hours. Counting every minute is the other extreme, if one desires to be fully organized. There should be some other way to divide up the day in the best way to ensure full-capacity performance.

So glorify God when you reach evening and when you rise in the morning; for all praise is His in the heavens and on earth, and towards the end of the day and when you have reached noon. (Rum 30:17-18).

This succinct daily plan mentioned in the Qur’anic verse above would be a good program if it can be applied (it is important to note here that this verse is not concerned with time management per se).

Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, in his 9th Word,⁴ talks about the meaning of this verse, including how to glorify God. And also he mentions the parts of the day and their corresponding meaning with spiritual insight. He basically divides the day into five parts. A day starts with “early morning,” continues with “just past midday,” “afternoon” follows, and “sunset” leads you onto “nightfall.” By dividing one’s day into spiritual sections, it is possible to review the day and the progress between these parts.

Spiritual needs

Human beings are not animals. They feel, they choose, they live as they want. And they are free to go in any direction. They have a soul that guides their way of living. There are plenty of stories that have unhappy endings solely due to an ignorance of a spiritual life. Time management, of course, is directly related to the spiritual life of the individual; the choices people make are formed in their souls. They desire, they plan, and they implement. Thus, people also need time for their desires, and due to the large number of wishes people have to manage their time. An individual sets their priorities to achieve their goals. But due to the external effects (mostly other people) the schedule of this person changes to the best-suited model. Some people like such changes, but the majority do not. This is actually not very surprising, as human beings have different personalities and characters arising from their spiritual background. Therefore, anything that has an impact on spiritual life has to be important in managing our time.

To have the ability to control our life and to manage our time, we have to look within ourselves and discover what is in our hearts. For example one of my close friends told me that he had been able to experience a highly-ordered daily life when he left home after having read some verses from the Qur’an. He added that in a busy day, with tons of work, he still manages to handle all of it if he reads from the Qur’an at the beginning of the day. But if he doesn’t do this he loses control and everything becomes confused, and his mind jams. What is happening here is that perhaps he is able to clarify his mind by taking a spiritual shower that gives him strong support throughout the whole day.

Once we get into a spiritual flow we will be able to realize that everything has a harmonic rhythm that will help to build our schedule on the path we have anticipated. The key concept is, then, keeping our spiritual life balanced in a way that does not let anything interfere. My friend found the perfect key; this should also be possible for every one of us.

Action plan

Knowing that priorities, careful organization, and spiritual needs are key concepts in time management, one should find the best way for them to succeed. Below is a possible to-do list:

1. Identification of priorities: What is really important for me?

2. Planning the time: How do I like to do things?

3. Feeding your spiritual self: What can help my mind to be perfectly clear?

4. Reviewing the status: Where I am?

To start or give feedback if you have been carrying out a feasible plan you must be able to observe your present course. Prof. Rustu Kalyoncu suggests a plan with 15 MINUTES slices at this point: “Write down what you’ve done for every 15 MINUTES (for a couple days) and criticize how efficient you have been. I promise you’ll find lots of free time waiting for you…”

Notes

1. www.gmu.edu/gmu/personal/time.html
2. www.see.ed.ac.uk/~gerard/Management/art2.html
3. www.tsuccess.dircon.co.uk/timemanagementtips.htm
4. Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, The Words, (translated by Sukran Vahide), Sozler Publications, 1998.

But sometimes messages can lead to malicious results. Some carry viruses, defined as unwanted and sometimes harmful computer codes. Others are hijacked and spill their secrets without a fight, or seem to come from friends who “decided” to send you false news.

Given today’s reliance on e-mail, any security gap is a problem. Fortunately, such gaps are filled easily and can keep important e-mail safe and secret.

Is E-mail Privacy an Illusion?

The most common fear is prying eyes. Just as standard mail may not be private, e-mail is not entirely private, for it is easy to intercept e-mail messages. However, the risk of this occurring is often overstated.

Surveys show that many employers occasionally read employees’ e-mail. If the messages are on company-owned computers, such “snooping” is legal. If you send and receive e-mail on your own computer, you will face a similar problem: hackers. You cannot ignore the small chance of nosy hackers at servers along the way. Even worse, it is easy to make e-mail look like it came from someone else.

How can your e-mail privacy be protected? Fortunately, suitable tools are available. One is encryption, which prevents any message modification or disclosure. Digital signatures can be used for authentication purposes. While these may seem to aggravate the problem, they are proper steps to take if you are concerned about your e-mail’s privacy. Reliably identifying the message’s sender is even mentioned in the Holy Books, as in: O believers. If a wicked person comes to you with news, ascertain the truth, lest you harm people unwittingly and afterwards become full of repentance for what you have done (Qur’an 49:6).

Many other solutions, most of them free, also are available. For example Microsoft’s Outlook, the leading e-mail program, includes several built-in security features to protect your sent e-mail. Outlook can “digitally sign” messages with a special code to show that the message is from you, and also verify the sender’s signature. Second, you can encrypt messages and attachments to ensure privacy.

To sign or encrypt messages with such e-mail programs as Outlook, you need a digital ID (also known as a certificate or key). Digital IDs consist of a public key and private key. The private key is stored on your machine and is never sent to anyone. You can e-mail the public key to correspondents, or they can access it from a central server. When you send a signed message, your private key generates a code that only your public key can decode. Thus your public key verifies that you sent the message with your private key. When you send an encrypted message, you use their public key to encrypt it so that only their private key can decrypt it. If you follow this procedure, only the recipient with the correct private key will be able to read the message.

Digital IDs are available from such third-party companies as VeriSign. Once an ID has been imported, you can use the features on the Security tab in your e-mail program’s Options dialog box to establish a standard security procedure. Alternatively, individual users can download a free program based on the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) standard for noncommercial use. PGP integrates itself with several e-mail programs and allows users to generate an ID for signing and encrypting e-mail or files. PGP also works with Web-based e-mail systems by allowing you to select text in any program and then sign or encrypt it.

Encryption keep messages secret. Even people sending e-mail at work can count on a PGP-type system to keep unwanted readers locked out, as long as both sender and recipient encrypt.

Things to Remember

Keep Passwords Secret: Web-based e-mail, such as Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail, presents another security concern: Subscribers can use any computer to check their messages. User IDs and passwords protect unauthorized access. But going somewhere without logging off lets someone else read your e-mail and send e-mail under your name. To avoid this, Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail automatically clear sensitive information from the browser’s cache when you log off. In addition, after you log off someone else cannot log on by clicking the back button.

Another strategy is to choose an unusual password and keep it secret. A simple e-mail password is easy to remember-and easy to crack. Many password cracking applications are online, and most use a dictionary of common words to search for your password. Your best bet is to use an alphanumeric password.

E-mail Viruses: New viruses, some of them quite harmful, pop up almost daily. One of the fastest ways to spread them is via e-mail. Recent examples are the Melissa and the so-called “I love you” viruses, which could copy and mail themselves to the first 50 people in your Outlook address book. To avoid this, learn the basic limitations of viruses. Receiving, opening, or reading an e-mail message will not infect your system. Viruses are not that wily yet, so you can open the messages. However, be careful about any attachments. Attachments are usually displayed as file icons at the message’s bottom or perhaps as hyperlinks that you need to download. Opening an attachment can allow a virus to escape and infect your system.

Some attached files are more virus-friendly than others. Watch out for files with .exe .com, and .bat extensions, for they can contain viruses. The fastest growing category of viruses today ride Microsoft Office Document (.doc) files as macros, executable files that record common keyboard and mouse actions to a single key with word processing, spreadsheet, and other documents.

One way to protect your computer is not to open attachments from strangers. A better and easier solution is to get an antivirus program that scans attachments before they can run. Such programs can hunt continuously in the background for macro viruses, as well as for the more traditional executable foes. Such virus-fighter sites as McAfee or Symantec allow you download a free demonstration version of their leading programs. Virus checkers cannot keep up with new viruses, so it is still smart not to open attachments from unidentified sources. Beware of an attachment that appears out of nowhere, even if you have loaded a virus program.

Misleading Links: Another threat is hyperlinks to odd Web sites. Many e-mail programs allow users to send Web links within a message so that recipients can click and begin loading the page in their browser. However, Web pages can contain scripts (a sequence of executable commands) designed to weasel through the browser’s security measures and infect your computer with virus-like programs. This is more a matter of browser security than e-mail security. Although you probably will not encounter a Web page sophisticated enough to take advantage of browser security problems, you should be prepared by ensuring that your browser’s security options are set appropriately. Also, keep your browser current.

You ‘ve Got E-mail: Although most security problems could strike anyone, most of us do not need to turn e-mail habits into something out of a spy novel. Just be aware of the possibilities and take a few steps to see that your e-mail is protected.

Try not to create e-mail security holes. Almost everyone sometimes sends an e-mail message to a wrong address. When addresses are no more than initials, numbers, and meaningless gib berish, this is easy. Often the results are slightly embarrassing-sometimes almost catastrophic.

Consider the case of the Illinois man who left Chicago’s snow-filled streets for a Florida vacation. His wife was on a business trip, and was planning to meet him there the next day. He sent her a quick e-mail upon reaching the hotel. Unfortunately, he missed one letter and his note reached the elderly wife of a preacher who had died the day before. When she checked her e-mail, she took one look at the monitor, screamed, and fainted. Her family rushed in and saw this note on the screen:

To My Dear Wife:

Just got checked in. Everything prepared for your arrival tomorrow.

Your Loving Husband

PS. Sure is hot down here.

References 

• http://email.about.com/internet/email/.
• www.emailtoday.com.
• www.lv.psu.edu/ojj/collectn/humor/dead-email.html.
• www.macafee.com.
• www.messagingonline.com/mt/html/feature031400.html.
• www.pgp.com/.
• www.publicdoman.com/email.html.
• www.smartcomputing.com/email.asp?emid-11018.
• www.symantec.com.
• www. timrichardson.net/misc/security.html.
• www.verisign.com/client/index.html.