Old out-dated advice never dies!
I cringe whenever I hear or read this old adage, "Don't open an attachment unless it's from someone you know." It's like saying, "I don't actually use e-mail but I like to give advice." When I once recieved e-mail from "myself", I had to pause in reflection on all this bad advice: "Should I open this? After all, it's from 'me' and I know who I am."
The aforementioned advice to always backup one's files, while still quite valid, is also painfully inadequate. As per Murphy's Law, backup copies can and do fail to meet expectations. For example, when a client phoned to complain that all her Outlook items were missing, I explained what had likely happened and asked whether she had a backup of it. She did but it didn't help her recover her Outlook items. Why? Quite simply, the backup of her old PST file had already been overwritten! Fortunately, I was able to recover most of her items from level 1 data recovery of ghost copies in free disk space but that's an expensive option with a high failure rate (particularly for such large files). I have always advised clients to never rely on a single backup copy but to regularly save a secondary backup in another safe location, such as a safe deposit box. When asked to design an automated network-based backup system for a commercial client, I took this strategy one step further and implemented the redundancy of maintaining a seperate backup copy for each day of the week, which strategy has often saved the day.
Having said this, I must add that there is more to this widespread use of outdated software that self-destructs than simple economics (can't afford to upgrade). This often fits a psychological profile that includes sentimental attachment to data, a loathing to delete or even archive anything. Can it be called accommodating or doesn't it rather seem ENABLING, that Microsoft should offer users virtually UNLIMITED Outlook file sizes? Perhaps it would do some a service to lose their 2 or 20 gigabytes of e-mail messages, some perhaps as old as the Internet itself.
