I get a lot of email. When opened, I immediately place them into one of four categories: Useful; funny, cute or beautiful but unnecessary; Annoying forwards; and Spam. The categorization process is a mental one and takes place in a split second.
Recently, Mom forwarded a message to me from my sister-in-law Nancy with instructions on how emails should be forwarded. After reading the information, I was pretty convinced that it was legitimate stuff but I needed an expert to confirm it for me. I immediately sent it to my friend, and computer guru, Kathy King to get her opinion. It is with Kathy’s blessings that I now forward the information to our readers. Please read and heed, especially before forwarding anything to me!
Do you really know how to forward emails? Most of us do not know how. Do you wonder why you get viruses or junk mail? Every time you forward an email there is information left over from all the people who received the message before you, including their e-mail addresses and names. As the messages get forwarded along, the list of addresses builds like a rolling snowball. At that point, all it takes is for some poor sap to get a virus and his or her computer can send the virus to every email address in its memory. Or, better yet, some bum can take all of those addresses and sell them or send junk mail to them, hoping you or some gullible yahoo will go to the site, putting five cents for each hit in the bum’s pocket.
How do you stop it? There are several easy steps:
1. When forwarding an email, delete all of the other addresses that appear in the body of the message (at the top). 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.
2. When sending an email to more than one person, do not use the “To:” or “Cc:” fields for adding email addresses. Always use the “BCC:” (blind carbon copy) field for listing the email addresses. This way, the people you send to will only see their own e-mail addresses.
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 email you are reading. By forwarding from the actual page, you stop the recipient from having to open many emails just to see what you sent. These are the ones that often end up having picked up a virus from somebody.
5. When deciding whether to forward a health warning or virus alert, check it out before you send it on. Most of it is junk mail that’s been circling the net for years! If you question the validity of any email, go to www.snopes. com–they are great with debunking emailed urban legends.
