Category: Geeks r Us
Passing this on from a friend's Facebook:
This was sent to me from a friend and I thought it was important to share
HOW TO FORWARD E-MAIL APPROPRIATELY
A friend who is a computer expert received the following directly from
a system administrator for a corporate system. It is an excellent
message that ABSOLUTELY applies to ALL of us who send e-mails. Please
read the short letter below, even if you're sure you already follow proper
procedures..
Do you really know how to forward e-mails? 50% of us do; 50% DO NOT. Do you wonder why you get viruses or junk mail? Do you hate it?
Every time you forward an e-mail there is information left over from
the people who got the message before you, namely their e-mail
addresses & 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 e-mail 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:
(1) When you forward an e-mail, 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.
(2) Whenever you send an e-mail to more than one person, do NOT use the
To:
or Cc: fields for adding e-mail addresses. Always use the BCC: (blind
carbon
copy) field for listing the e-mail addresses. This is the way the
people you send to will only see their own e-mail 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) Remove any "FW :" in the subject line. You can re-name the subject
if you wish or even fix spelling.
(4) ALWAYS hit your Forward button from the actual e-mail you are reading.
Ever get those e-mails 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
e-mails 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.
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 address on a
petition.
(Actually, if you think about it, who's supposed to send the petition
in to whatever cause it supports? And don 't believe the ones that say
that the email is being traced, it just aint so!)
(6) One of the main ones I hate is the ones that say that 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 AINT GONNA HAPPEN!!!!! (Trust me,
I'm still seeing some of the same ones that I waited on 10 years ago!)
I don't let the bad luck ones scare me either, they get trashed.
(Could be why I haven't won the
lottery??)
(7) Before you forward an Amber Alert, or a Virus Alert, or some of
the other ones 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 <http://www.snopes.com/>
http://www.snopes.com/
Its 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.
Good information. I usually copy the gist of the message, then creat a new email and use the bcc field.
I'm not a big fan of fwd's! Especially those ones where it is suppose to be a really touching message between friends, yet it is sent to a dozen people. I've been known to delete a fwd without reading it. smile
Good information. I'm not much of a forwarder. The only things I fwd r things having to do with school, which go to Disability Services. I'll keep these tips in mind.
Wow! Interesting!