DISCARD ANY message you receive from an e-mail address ending in @earthtym.net
It is NOT from me.

I have NOT sent ANY e-mails from earthtym.net since 2000, or before!

This has been made necessary and practical because spammers, hackers, virus distributors, and others of low self-esteem are too cowardly and greedy to accept responsibility for their actions which disadvantage, abuse and manipulate others.

Anyone with a website, and particularly the longer it has been active, or the more visible or annoying it is in the perceptions of others who ENVY your Mission, success, or goal, or, HATE you for demonstrating what they are not and believe they cannot be --- the more likely it will be that YOUR e-mail address, OR, an alias e-mail address of your website will be used by them to hide their identity from those they are spamming or sending viruses to.

An ALIAS address is ANY name attached to your domain name.
It can be any selection of alphabetic or numeric characters that precede the "@" sign in the address used. They may be commonly chosen names, apparent names of persons, or alphanumeric garbage, such as staff@earthtym.net, HaroldSam@earthtym.net, 1498slpg@earthtym.net.

IF you have set up the mail server for your website to relay any mail that uses your domain name as a suffix and which is NOT any of the specific ones you have designated as VALID, these non-standard and non-valid e-mails will be sent to the address you specify as the collection address. Many ISPs and e-mail services will allow you NOT to specify the forwarding of any alias e-mail.

SOME website and webmail hosting services are keenly aware of the fraud of forging e-mail addresses and can tell from the often hidden e-mail header details if YOU have sent the e-mails or if they are suspect of tampering. Unfortunately, MOST e-mail users are still unaware of these tactics (Summer, 2005) and may complain to your ISP that you are spamming or sending viruses. This may result in your ending up on SPAMMER lists!

From early 2004, or before, Anti-SPAM and Anti-VIRUS services, compiled lists of e-mail addresses used by spammers and hackers to hawk their wares and act out their anger and impotence. Unfortunately, this included e-mail addresses of innocent persons who had never done either of these frauds and were often unaware of what was being done until numerous friends or associates asked them about it, OR, many of their e-mails never ended up being delivered. Even if the individual became aware of the misdeed and complained to the Services involved and the ISPs, their address was NOT removed from the list. This was the major reason for my changing my main e-mail address in November, 2004.

Changing your e-mail address on a frequent basis is NOT constructive. There is every possibility that your NEW address will be picked up in a spider run and added to a Spammer's list for forging ... within hours, months. You will also have to notify ALL of those in your address book of the change and hope they keep a note of it. Without changing your webmail provider, there is also little change that any change will be of lasting protection. Your BEST DEFENCE is to notify those who write to you of the information on this page. You may share this URL freely, for this purpose:
http://www.earthtym.net/reply-from.htm

If you are going to be targeted, forged address e-mails may begin appearing with YOUR domain or e-mail address in as little as 16 hours after you have registered your website URL, or set up your e-mail service.

Domain registration services have tried to make it difficult for spider programs to scan their information and strip away valid e-mail addresses by often making it necessary for one to read an image code and enter it in order to gain entry to viewing registration records.

Website hosting services and web-based e-mail provision services appear to have NO Defense against the spider programs of hackers and spammers which scan their files daily for newly active addresses and domain names. The more popular they are, the more likely they will be scanned. If they are not popular, they may not be reliable or cost effective.

Some SAFE OPTIONS available for sharing files:

1. You can set up a webpage folder on your website and uploaded your personal digital photos or special files into it. Then share the unpublished address with friends and associates. No attachments.

2. I usually provide a link in my e-mails to a webpage or a photo page or to a download FTP folder and this eliminates the danger of attachments ... and in the few other cases, I make it known in the text of the e-mail that I am sending an attachment and what it is.

3. I NEVER send .zip or .exe files as attachments.
   These are the most common forms of viruses, together with .doc files.
   I also NEVER open such files when I receive them as attachments.