SPAM in my mailbox? Ew, Yuck!

I opened my mailbox for my school email account this morning only to find spam. Ew, Yuck! Sadly, though, for most, its a familiar sight, especially for teachers. It seems like every educational vendor in the world finds out your a teacher and they love blasting your mailbox with emails about why you should buy from them. For most, we've learned to deal with this as a normal part of life, just quietly delete their emails (unopened) and add their email address to your email filters. However, in my positionas my school's tech one thing I have learned is to not assume that everyone knows what to do in these situations. I receive questions about spam and unwanted emails on weekly, if not daily basis. The following is what I posted in our Tech Info folder for my staff:

I received the following email message this morning when I checked my email. I'm passing this along to you with some tips about how to protect yourself from receiving unwanted spam or possibly being hacked.

The only reason I opened the following email was because I thought it might have been from some ed professional group I had subscribed to. Turns out it wasn't, and I should have known better.

1. You can tell that it is not something I subscribe to because they addressed me as "Edcuation Professional". If it had been something I subscribed to, they already would have had my full name, or screen name I use on their site.

2. A quick search in Google for "MDR" revealed this as the TOP reference:

Hm, YIKES! I should have done this first, then I would have known not to open the email.

3. As I read on in the email it said: "As a member of MDR's Education Professional Email Database, if you do not wish to receive these informative email messages, please follow this link:"

I know I have not subscribed to this place so I'm NOT a member. I'm NOT clicking on their link. They are phishing for valid email addresses. If I clicked on the link, that would be a sign to them that my email address is a working email address. It would have opened me up as fresh meat to all sorts of venders just waiting to fill my email box with spam.

4. What to do with the email now? Simply delete it. I'm also going to be adding their email address to my email filters.

----- Original Message -----

Dear Education Professional,

We respect your time and value your opinion as an Education Professional, which is why we would like an opportunity to keep you current on products and services from relevant advertising partners, such as leading publishers, education technology providers and education associations.

Each email message will be preceded by the name of the company offering the product or service, so that you know the source and purpose of the email before opening.

As a member of MDR's Education Professional Email Database, if you do not wish to receive these informative email messages, please follow this link:

http://mdrcomm.net/o/?ZXD=184.13552376.7031083

Your option here will not affect any other services from us.

MDR

6 Armstrong Road

Shelton, CT 06484

Hopefully, this has helped some of you who already didn't know what to do when you receive and an unfamiliar email. In my next blog article I will be listing some tips on how to avoid unwanted mail in both your email box and your home (or school) mailbox. As always, I do so appreciate comments. Thanks for reading.

Default Printer Settings in iWork Pages

This week I discovered something peculiar at school while using iWork Pages. Pages has its own default printer settings, and it doesn't necessarily go by what your computer has set for default printer. In a networked environment, like a school, or even a home with more than one printer, this can get a bit annoying. I thought it was just my computer being wacky, not that my macbook pro would ever behave in such a manner, until someone else noticed this and emailed me about it. So, as I often do when I don't know the answer to a troubleshooting problem on the computers, I "googled" it. (Isn't it funny words become added to our vernacular? I mean 20 years ago, if you used that as a verb, people would say - you did what?!) This is what I found:

Pages defaults its print settings to the first printer in your printer list. As I said, this could get a bit bothersome if you are in a networked environment, like a school setting, where every classroom has a network printer. You could end up printing to the other end of the school without even realizing it if you are quick to hit the print button.

Fortunately, there is a way to fix this. Create a new document in Pages. You don't even have to type anything in it really. Hit print, then browse your printer list to find the printer you would like Pages to default to. Print your new document to your preferred printer, then save your document. From this point forward, any new document you create in Pages will default to this printer when printed. (If you change the printer, though, to say, like, a color printer, and, then save the document after it is printed to the newly changed printer, the new printer will then be your default printer.)

However, this default printer setting does not apply to any documents that were previously created and saved. These will all have to be changed as you open and print them the first time through. If you save them again after you change the printer to your preferred printer, they will then be saved with the default printer setting being saved to your preferred printer.