Proper e-mail etiquette

Tweet

The following comes from a system administrator for a corporate system. It is an excellent message that ABSOLUTELY applies to ALL of us who send e-mail. PLEASE read the short letter below, even if you’re sure you already follow proper procedure. Do you really know how to forward e-mail 50% of us do and 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 and 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, some can take all of those addresses and sell them, or send junk mail to them in 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 and 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, or 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 FORWARD first, you won’t be able to edit the message at all. (2) Whenever you send an e-mail to more that 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: opton 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 name the subject if you wish or even fix the 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 pages you wish someone to view, you stop them from having to open many e-mails just to see what you sent. THIS NOT ONLY SAVES TIME, BUT ALSO SPACE ON THE COMPUTER. (4) 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 to 10 – 15 people or your entire address book. The email can be forwarded on and on and can collect thousands of names and e-mail 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 e-mail addressed 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 e-mail addresses on a petition. (Actually, if you think about it, who is supposed to send the petition in to whatever cause it supports? And don’t believe the ones that say the email is being traced, it just ain’t so!) One of the main ones I hate is the ones that say something like, Send this e-mail 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 this be why I haven’t won the lottery??) Before you forward an Amber Alert or a Virust Alert or some of the other ones floating around nowadays, check them out before sending. Most of them are junk mail that’s been circling the net for YEARS! Just about everything you receive in an e-mail that is in question can be checked out at www.snopes.com Its really easy to find out if its real or not. If its not, please DON’T pass in on.