[Nfbf-l] E-Mail Facts You Should Know

[Alan Dicey]

    E-Mail Facts You Should Know
You may know most of these helps; but it is always worth being reminded 
again.
E-Mail Facts You Should Know
This 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.
A System Administrator for a large corporate system, has this to say:
Do you really know how to forward e-mails? 50% of us do;
50% of us 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 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 addresses contained therein.  If you want to support the petition, 
send it as your own personal letter to the intended recipient.  Your 
position will 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 youll see something great run across 
your screen.
Or sometimes they'll just tease you by saying something  really cute will 
happen. IT AINT GONNA HAPPEN!!!!!
I don't let the bad luck ones scare me either, they get trashed.
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
Its really easy to find out if its 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. Finally, here's an idea!!!  Let's send this to everyone we know. 
This is something that SHOULD be forwarded.