When visiting the YouTube website to watch videos, you can do so without having to create a YouTube account.  Despite not being required to create a YouTube account, you may want to look into doing so, as there are a number of benefits to being a YouTube member.  Just a few of those benefits are outlined below.

One of the many benefits to registering for a free YouTube account is that it is relatively easy to do. When you signup for a free YouTube account, you need to provide a little bit of information about yourself.  This information includes your name, the country that you live in, your zip code, your date of birth, as well as your gender.  You will also need to create a YouTube user name for yourself, as well as a password.  Your password and user name will be used to log into your account.  Signing up for a YouTube account should take only a few minutes of your time, at the most.

Once you have created a free YouTube account for yourself, you can then begin to enjoy the many other benefits of having a YouTube account.  One of those benefits is the ability to rate videos that you watch, as well as leave comments.  As it was previously mentioned, you can watch videos on YouTube without having a YouTube account, but you cannot rate videos or leave comments for the video owner.  Rating YouTube videos gives other YouTube users an idea as to which videos are high in demand, which, in turn, can lead to more of your favorite videos being found on the YouTube site.  That is just one of the many reasons why you should not only signup for a free YouTube account, but also rate YouTube that you watch or leave comments.

In addition to being able to rate or review videos, registering for a free YouTube account also gives you the option of sharing your videos with other internet users.  Non-registered YouTube members are unable to upload and share any videos that they may have made.  If you have never shared videos online, you may want to think about doing so, as they are fun to make.  Many of the videos currently found on YouTube are comedy skits, video blogs, and candid videos.  All you really need to have is a video recording device, such as a cell phone, webcam, or camcorder, and a movie editing software program, which now comes standard on most computers.

As it was previously stated, creating a membership account with YouTube is free and it should only take a few minutes of your time.  If you enjoy using the internet as a source of entertainment, you will not only want to visit YouTube, but you will also want to take the few minutes needed to register for a free account.  In the end, you will likely be pleased with your decision to do so.

“Studies show unsolicited or “junk” e-mail, known as spam, accounts for roughly half of all e-mail messages received. Although once regarded as little more than a nuisance, the prevalence of spam has increased to the point where many users have begun to express a general lack of confidence in the effectiveness of e-mail transmissions, and increased concern over the spread of computer viruses via unsolicited messages.”

In 2003, President Bush signed the “Can Spam” bill, in December of 2003 which is the first national standards around bulk unsolicited commercial e-mail. The bill, approved by the Senate by a vote of 97 to 0, prohibits senders of unsolicited commercial e-mail from using false return addresses to disguise their identity (spoofing) and the use of dictionaries to generate such mailers. In addition, it prohibits the use of misleading subject lines and requires that emails include and opt-out mechanism. The legislation also prohibits senders from harvesting addresses off Web sites. Violations constitute a misdemeanor crime subject to up to one year in jail.

One major point that needs to be discussed about this: spam is now coming from other countries in ever-greater numbers. These emails are harder to fight, because they come from outside our country’s laws and regulations. Because the Internet opens borders and thinks globally, these laws are fine and good, but do not stop the problem.

So what do you do about this? Here are the top 5 Rules to do to protect from spam.

Do what you can to avoid having your email address out on the net.

There are products called “spam spiders” that search the Internet for email addresses to send email to. If you are interested, do a search on “spam spider” and you will be amazed at what you get back. Interestingly, there is a site, WebPoison.org, which is an open source project geared to fight Internet “spambots” and “spam spiders”, by giving them bogus HTML web pages, which contain bogus email addresses.

A couple suggestions for you: a) use form emails, which can hide addresses or also b) use addresses like sales@company.com instead of your full address to help battle the problem. c) There are also programs that encode your email, like jsGuard, which encodes your email address on web pages so that while spam spiders find it difficult or impossible to read your email address.

Number 2: Get spam blocking software. There are many programs out there for this. (go to www.cloudmark.com or www.mailwasher.net for example). You may also buy a professional version. Whatever you do, get the software. It will save you time. The software is not foolproof, but they really do help. You usually have to do some manual set up to block certain types of email.

Number 3: Use the multiple email address approach.

There are a lot of free email addresses to be had. If you must subscribe to newsletters, then have a “back-up” email address. It would be like giving your sell phone number to your best friends and the business number to everyone else.

Number 4: Attachments from people you don’t know are BAD, BAD, BAD.

A common problem with spam is that they have attachments and attachments can have viruses. Corporations often have filters that don’t let such things pass to you. Personal email is far more “open country” for spamers. General rule of thumb: if you do not know who is sending you something, DO NOT OPEN THE ATTACHMENT. Secondly, look for services that offer filtering. Firewall vendors offer this type of service as well.

Number 5: Email services now have “bulk-mail” baskets. If what you use currently does not support this, think about moving to a new vender. The concept is simple. If you know someone, they can send you emails. If you don’t know them, put them in the bulk email pile and then “choose” to allow them into your circle. Spam Blocking software has this concept as well, but having extra layers seems critical these days, so it is worth looking into.