How to forward e-mails safely!!

DO YOU KNOW HOW TO SAFELY FORWARD E-MAILS?

PLEASE READ AND FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS!

This is well worth reading because a lot of people don't understand what happens when they forward and re-forward E-mail without deleting the names of prior senders. Consider this a little primer on e-mail:

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 over and over and over again, the list of addresses builds, and builds, and builds, and all it takes is for ONE person to get a virus, and his or her computer can send that virus to EVERY E-mail address that has come across his or her computer, INCLUDING YOURS.

And if that isn't bad enough, someone can take all of those addresses and sell them or send junk mail to them in the hopes that you will go to some web 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. Highlight them and delete them - by backspacing them, cutting 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.

(2) Whenever you send a 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) line for listing your E-mail addresses. This way, people that you send email 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! Depending on your Email Program, you can also open a new mail, then go up to "View" at the top of your screen, and make sure "Show BCC" is ticked.

When you send E-mail using the BCC: your message will automatically say "Undisclosed Recipients" in the "TO:" field of the people who receive it. This protects your friends addresses so that nefarious people can't accumulate them!

When forwarding an E-mail, forward it while you have it open, right after you have read it.

When you close that email and then forward it later the recipient of that email may have to open attachments up to 10-12 different times or more (depending on just how it was forwarded to you) before they can actually read the message you sent them! Trust me, that is EXTREMELY irritating, especially when you have limited time to read your email. It is much better to be able to open an email and read it immediately without all the annoying extra steps.