Good Advice For Forwarding Email

[KumaarShah 143]

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? Most of us DO NOT know how.

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 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:

(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 you know how to. 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 hit the forward button first you won't have full editing functions . I particularly dislike having to scroll through 200 Email addresses before I get to the email.

(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.< /SPAN>

That way you aren't sharing all those addresses with every Tom, **** or Harry.

(3) Remove any 'FW:' in the subject line. You can re-name the subject if you wish or even fix spelling.

This one is very important - please read and heed

(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. These are the ones that often end up having picked up a virus from somebody. This is really important!

(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 ain't 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 AIN'T 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 this 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/

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.

Finally, here's an idea!!! Let's send this to everyone we know (but strip my address off first, please!).

This is something that SHOULD be forwarded.

Edited April 5, 2008 by KumaarShah

[vishalkumar 0]

^^^

Truly great and right information. I hope everybody who reads it follows the same.

[Dj 25]

i just copied the whole darn thing and fwded to everyone i know... hows that for a start

Edited April 4, 2008 by Dj

[raccoon 53]

I hope you did it "appropriately"!

Edited April 4, 2008 by raccoon

[Honest 836]

^^^

@KumaarShah

Yes my dear friend, your suggestion is very useful not only to the members of rimweb but also to those, to whom these suggestions will be forwarded.

Regards.

[KumaarShah 143]

Thanks, folks if the above has been useful to all.

Now coming to honesty, I have been following the above rules 1 to 6 since almost 7 to 8 years, though the emails that I receive do not follow the above rules so diligently. I have been following these rules without any help from anyone or any web site at all. I have been educating some of my friends and relatives also about this since a long time.

Particularly rule 4, which says to hit the forward button from the actual email that you see finally. Now this is one thing many do not do. We need to maintain secrecy and security also by strictly following this rule. Many people just hit forward from the 1st email itself.

Deleting some of the info in the email is not easy also many times. It has to be done line by line, and not just block/mark and delete.

[copperco2 24]

but this does not apply in a corporate environment..

wherein any issue started in a mail and send and cc to couple of guys will be replied t the same mail and will have all the conversation on the particular subject for reference..

until the issue gets resolved..

otherwise it will make sense..

[KumaarShah 143]

^^

You are right, it may not be workable in corporate environments. This is mainly meant for fwds of jokes, articles, petitions, etc. Obviously for corporate communications, these rules need not be applied at all.