It is an excellent article that ABSOLUTELY applies to ALL of us who send emails. Do you really know how to forward emails? 10% of us do; 90% DO NOT. Do you wonder why you get viruses or junk mail? Do you hate it? Every time you forward an email there is information left over from the people who got the message before you, namely their email addresses and names.
As the messages get forwarded along, the list of addresses builds, and builds, and builds, and all it takes is for some poor sap to get a virus, and his or her computer can send that virus to every email address that has come across his computer. Or, someone can take all of those addresses and sell them or send junk mail to them in the hopes that you will go to the site and he will make five cents for each hit. That’s right, all of that inconvenience over a nickel! How do you stop it? Well, there are several easy steps. Read more to see …
Try the following if you haven’t done it before:
(1) Delete the other email addresses:
When you forward an email, DELETE all of the other addresses that appear in the body of the message (at the top). That’s right, DELETE them. Highlight them and delete them, backspace them, cut them, whatever it is you know how to do. It only takes a second.
You MUST click the “Forward” button first and then you will have full editing capabilities against the body and headers of the message. If you don’t click on “Forward” first, you won’t be able to edit the message at all.
You do this and so your email address does not end up, weeks down the line, in a couple of hundred strangers inboxes.
(2) Use BCC and not TO or CC:
Whenever you send an email to more than one person, do NOT use the To: or Cc: fields for adding email addresses. Always use the BCC:(blind carbon copy) field for listing ALL the email addresses. This is the way the people you send to will only see their own email address. If you don’t see your BCC: option click on where it says To: and your address list will appear. Highlight the address and choose BCC: and that’s it, it’s that easy. When you send to BCC: your message will automatically say “Undisclosed Recipients in the “TO:” field of the people who receive it.
(3) Clean up the Subject Line:
Remove any “FW :” in the subject line. You can re-name the subject if you wish or even fix spelling. If the subject line makes no sense, then change it. Don’t leave it as “funny” or “must see”, change it to something descriptive.
(4) Forward the actual email, and not the email containing the actual email:
ALWAYS hit your Forward button from the actual email you are reading . Ever get those emails that you have to open 10 pages to read the one page with the information on it? By Forwarding from the actual page you wish someone to view, you stop them from having to open many emails just to see what you sent.
(5) Have you ever gotten an email that is a petition?
It states a position and asks you to add your name and address and to forward it to 10 or 15 people or your entire address book. The email can be forwarded on and on and can collect thousands of names and email addresses. A FACT: The completed petition is actually worth a couple of bucks to a professional spammer because of the wealth of valid names and email addresses contained therein. DO NOT put your email address on any petition.
If you want to support the petition, send it as your own personal letter to the intended recipient. Your position may carry more weight as a personal letter than a laundry list of names and email addresses on a petition. (And don’t believe the ones that say that the email is being traced; it just ain’t so!)
ACTUAL FACT: Most e-mail petitions are worthless because they do not fully identify the signer by street address, etc. nor does it prove that the signer really signed it. Don’t forward them.
(6) Clean the email up!
If it’s important enough to send to me, please take the time to “clean it up”.
(7) What NOT to forward & What belongs in the TRASH:
Some of the other emails to delete and not forward are:
a. The one that says something like, “Send this email to 10 people and you’ll see something great run across your screen.” Or sometimes they’ll just tease you by saying ‘something really cute will happen.‘ IT AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN!!!!! I repeat…. IT AIN”T GONNA HAPPEN!!!!! (No matter how many you send it to or how long you wait…. IT AIN”T GOING TO HAPPEN!!!!!!!! We are still seeing some of the same emails that we waited on 10 years ago!)
b. I don’t let the bad luck ones scare me either, they should get trashed.
c. Before you forward an ‘Amber Alert‘ , or a ‘Virus Alert‘ , or some of the other emails floating around nowadays, check them out before you forward them. Most of them are junk mail that’s been circling the net for YEARS! Just about everything you receive in an email that is in question can be checked out at Snopes. Just go to www.snopes.com. It’s really easy to find out if it’s real or not. If it’s not, please don’t pass it on.
So please, in the future, let’s stop the junk mail and the viruses.
Also get rid of the advertisements at the bottom of your emails! You pay for your internet why advertise free for them? If they want advertisement let them pay you to use your space!!!!
