How To Forward Emails Safely

One of the few very practical e-mails that are useful to ALL of us.

From a system administrator for a corporate system. It is an excellent message that *ABSOLUTELY* applies to *ALL* of us who send e-mails.

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 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 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.

Try the following if you haven't done it before:

(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 addressescontained 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 address on a petition.
*(And don't believe the ones that say that the email is being
traced, it just ain't so!)
*/
*/Some of the other emails to delete and not forward are:
/*
/1. 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!!!!!_ *(We are still seeing
some of the same emails that we waited on 10 years ago!)// //
/
/2. I don't let the bad luck ones scare me either, they get
trashed. /

/3. _ 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/* <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.