One of our readers from West Virginia, Nova asks:
"How can I change my email from Compuserve to MSN? I'm getting so many obscene things that I would like to change if possible."

There are several things working here behind this question.

Basically, changing your email address will not stop the trash. No matter what Service Provider you use, you have to learn how to use their filters to teach it what to let through to you. Please read the pages on Email, and Junk mail.

1. Compuserve is her ISP, or Internet Service Provider. Often, there isn't much choice in some rural areas, so that particular change may not be possible, or practical. An email address is provided automatically, and you will always have email coming into it which you do not ever need to read, if you don't want to. Good form is to clean it out every so often. Check who it's from first! Even better, learn to use their filter. (see Item 4)
2. MSN does not provide access to Internet Service but rather is a type of website that is called a "portal", offering MSNBC News, , videos, entertainment, weather, shopping AND Email Service so you can use it as an extra email address. to use whenever you are online for newsletter subscriptions, shopping, etc., but keep it just for that.
   After opening your Internet browser, you would go to MSN.com, and sign up. Since Microsoft owns MSN, it will guide you to signing up for "Live Mail", which will give you an address: yournamechoice @ live.com.
3. However, any and all email addresses will start to acquire junk mail, as there are "spybots" roaming the Internet constantly picking up any email address it can find, to sell to advertisers. Every time someone sends you an email, with your address in the To: box, it's out there for all the world to find, so this is inevitable. Another reason for protective software.
4. There are actions you must take to keep your email as clear as you can. Every email program that is worth anything, will have a way for you to FILTER your email, but you must learn how to use it. Don't just delete them.
   Basically, it will ask YOU to decide what is junk mail, after opening the email then you click on a Junk or SPAM button. It will automatically be re-routed to your "junk mail" folder. You have to do this for all of them, then gradually there will be less and less as you teach it to look for those senders. Pretty cool, isn't it? You are teaching the machine!
   Later if you are missing something that might have been incorrectly sent there, you can go into that folder to check.
   There will also be a way to designate to BLOCK a sender, which you must do for every obscenity. Then you will NOT receive any more from that sender.
5. Then the last thing you will want to do, is get one email address that you will give ONLY to your friends and family to use, and use it's filter to remove everything else. I use gMail, which you can get from Google.com. Teach your family and friends the good email practices that I tell about on my page Email.

Managing your email is a task, just like all the other maintenance tasks in your life. Just do it.



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