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.