Stalker
I have been plagued by an email stalker, who has been "blind copying" his messages to my friends and colleagues. How can I uncover the blind copy list? Name withheld
Jack Schofield replies: When email addresses are put in the "blind carbon copy" or BCC: field, they are not sent with the mail and therefore cannot be recovered. In fact, even if the mail is held in the Sent Items folder on the sender's computer, the BCC: entries will not usually be preserved, though there are ways companies can retain this information. Either way, stalking is a criminal offence under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, and you should consider reporting it to the police. An article in G2 provides an account of one such case: www.theguardian.com/online/story. Also, see the Malicious Communications page at www.harassment-law.co.uk/comm.htm for information about the Malicious Communications Act 1998 and the law on cyberstalking.
Only protect
Is it possible, using Windows 98SE, to password protect either a folder or the entire contents of a floppy disk? Failing that, is there a download that may be used to secure a floppy disk? Karen Roberts
JS: There is no good way to secure a floppy, and anyway, that's not necessary. The simplest approach is to compress the files you want to protect with a program such as WinZip, WinACE, WinRAR or similar zip-compatible software. You may already have something suitable, but if not, see http://download.com.com/3150-2250-0.html?tag=dir.
Most of these programs give you the option to add password protection. The password must not be a short word, and not one found in dictionaries. However, if you use a long password (preferably 12-16 characters) that includes both letters and numbers, you can consider your files secure for normal purposes. An amusing extra might be to camouflage the resulting files as something else, such as Word documents, using Camouflage.
If you need something tougher, you could use an encryption program such as Bestcrypt or ABI-Coder. See http://download.com.com for a selection. If you are keeping the files on your PC, you could also consider Magic Folders or Encrypted Magic Folders and similar programs.
Accessibility
Last week in Web watch, you noted that this year has been designated by the European Union as the year for people with disabilities. Why is the online version of Ask Jack not accessible to people with disabilities? Or, why is none of the Guardian website accessible? Martin Ruddock
JS: When the Guardian first appeared online - starting with Online's own website in 1996 - the web was not a mass medium and accessibility was rarely a consideration. Emily Bell, the editor of Guardian Unlimited, says: "Although we do put alt tags on images, and try and make sure we have standard text on our pages, we have not made the leap to full accessibility, which is something of a source of shame. But as soon as we can, we will."
Page mailer
Is there a web application that can email me the homepage of a dynamic website on regular basis? Daryl Pereira
JS: Web2Mail offers this as a free service. There's a list of this and other web-by-mail options at www.oscar.org.uk/webmail.htm
Battery saver
What is the best way to charge lithium-ion notebook batteries to maximise life? Gwyn Bassett
JS: Although Li-ion batteries are said not to suffer from the memory effects that plague Nicads, I charge mine fully, then try to run them flat before recharging. The aim is to prolong the life of the battery by minimising the number of charge/discharge cycles. When my notebook is plugged into the mains, I remove the battery once it has charged: some batteries can be harmed by overcharging. For further information, see www.battery-direct.com/faq.htm.
Look, Sharp
I know you said that last week's was the last word, but please reconsider. I wanted to write the musical notation for "flat" and "sharp" in a Word document, but could not find font symbols to do it. Jeremy Windust
JS: I'm not an expert on notation, but online, these characters are usually spelled out: Trio in F Sharp Minor; B flat Clarinet, etc. However, you could use the Bach Font for Musicologists from Dr Yo Tomita, in the school of music, Queen's University of Belfast. This shareware font offers a huge set of musical symbols for Microsoft Windows and Apple Macs "but retains the normal English character set in a standard Roman typeface". Go to www.music.qub.ac.uk/~tomita/bach-mf.html. The Unicode system, used in Windows NT/XP since 1992 and in Mac OS X, also supports music symbols. Go to www.alanwood.net/unicode and scroll down for details.
Backchat
· Last week, Annette Ray asked about a spam email that told her to phone a certain number. Simon Smith says that often "the scam is to make you call the number - it is a drop charge call. Every time your phone connects, you are charged a sum to your phone bill." Phone drop charges of up to £1 can be used to pay for products from vending machines, for example. Oftel says these are now classed as premium-rate numbers beginning 090.
· Don Smith asked about software for encrypting and protecting email. One of last week's suggestions was PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), which is included in Demon's Turnpike mail software. However, Brian Stedeford reports that Turnpike 6 "did dreadful things to my new XP machine. It locked up so that as soon as XP was loaded, both keyboard and mouse were unusable. Demon told me (afterwards!) that PGP does not work with XP." Demon's site now says: "There is not yet a released version of PGP that supports Windows XP". Chris Pogson has suggested Bytefusion's SecExMail, which will automatically encrypt mail to other SecExMail users. It can be downloaded from www.bytefusion.com/download.
