how_to_forward
This excellent message ABSOLUTELY applies to ALL of us who send
e-mails.
Read the text below...
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 two easy steps:
1) When you forward an e-mail,
DELETE all of the other
addresses that appear in
the body of the message. 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, 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.
AOL users can highlight the message text and then click on forward
this will send only the selected text plus a short line on it's
source, which can then be highlighted and deleted.
2) Whenever you send an e-mail to more than one person, do NOT use
the
To:
or
Cc:
columns for adding e-mail address.
Always use the
BCC: (blind
carbon copy) column for listing the e-mail addresses. This is the
way that people you send to 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.
Another method is to insert your address in the "TO:" and everyone
else's in the "BBC:" field which will completely hide everyone's
address except yours. The only drawback with this method is you
will be sending the message back to yourself and will have to delete
it from your own mail box. However on the plus side, if someone
wishes to reply to your message and accidentally, or intentionally,
clicks the "REPLY TO ALL" field, the message will only be delivered
to your mail box as all address in the "BBC:" field have been
effectively block. I know this works because I receive emails from
people I do not know that are replies to one I sent out to someone
on my email list and it only comes back with my address and the
person to whom they are replying to, not everyone I had originally
sent the email to.
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). This is something that SHOULD be forwarded.
Hope you find the above info useful and helpful.