My friend sent this to me today. I think it’s great. Everything you need to know about forwarding in one email.

If you do these things already, it’s good to read it and remind yourself of how much you already think about before forwarding an email.

If you didn’t know what to do or how to do it, this should help.

If you can’t always be bothered, maybe this will encourage you to follow these steps more often.

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 one to get a virus, and his or her computer can send that virus to every e-mail address that has come across his computer.

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 it to will only see their e-mail address.

If you don’t see a 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 spellings.

(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 attachments 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 got 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 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!)

(6) 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 AINT 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 this be why I haven’t won the lottery??)

(7) 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 http://www.snopes.com Read more about hoaxes in a post I’ve written recently

Its 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.

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5 Comments

kathryn · December 31, 2008 at 6:51 am

I still can’t seem to get rid of all the e-mail addresses, even doing everything you state to do. I am using Thunderbird and would love to send forward cute jokes and such, but simply refuse to do so when so much is attached to it Also is there some special way of deleting the header framework? Thanks for the help

Barbara · January 8, 2009 at 5:08 pm

Thank you,that is good info, especially the BCC advice for sending to multiple recipients.

    Heena Modi · January 13, 2009 at 9:01 pm

    No probs.
    Did oyu read the post about declawing cats? I looked at your website so I thought you may be interested in it.

Barbara · January 14, 2009 at 9:12 am

Yes I found your post from the link you put on the petition and it was very informative, thanks for that and for your signature.

    Heena Modi · January 14, 2009 at 5:58 pm

    No probs at all 🙂

Comments are closed.