Words To Live
By.
The following is
reported to have been written by 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? 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 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 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 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: 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 pet 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!) 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 be why I haven't won the lottery.)
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
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.