FORWARDING EMAILS

General, but useful, information sent in by a regular contributor Mr. Ezz Bish

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 their 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.

How do you stop it? Well, there are two easy solutions:-

Solution 1

Before forwarding an e-mail, DELETE all of the other addresses that appear in the body of the message.

Highlight them and delete them; backspace them; cut them; whatever it is you know how to do.

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.

Or alternatively -

Solution 2

Whenever you send an 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) column for listing the e-mail addresses.

This is the way that people you send 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.

When you send to BCC: your message will automatically say "Undisclosed Recipients" in the "TO:" field of the people who receive it. 

So please, in the future, let's stop the junk mail in its tracks and the viruses! 

I have received the following information from Angie Sanchez which enhances, endorses and reinforces the information given above:-

He wrote:

By now, I suspect everyone is familiar with snopes.com and/or truthorfiction.com for determining whether information received via email is just that: true/false or fact/fiction. Both are excellent sites.

Advice from snopes.com VERY IMPORTANT!!

1) Any time you see an email that says "forward this on to '10' (or however many) of your friends", "sign this petition", or "you'll get bad luck" or "you'll get good luck" or "you'll see something funny on your screen after you send it" or whatever --- it almost always has an email tracker program attached that tracks the cookies and emails of those folks you forward to. 

The host sender is getting a copy each time it gets forwarded and then is able to get lists of 'active' email addresses to use in SPAM emails or sell to other spammers. Even when you get emails that demand you send the email on if you're not ashamed of God/Jesus --- that is email tracking, and they are playing on our conscience. These people don't care how they get your email addresses - just as long as they get them. 

Also, emails that talk about a missing child or a child with an incurable disease "how would you feel if that was your child" --- email tracking. Ignore them and don't participate!

2) Almost all emails that ask you to add your name and forward on to others are similar to that mass letter years ago that asked people to send business cards to the little kid in Florida who wanted to break the Guinness Book of Records for the most cards. All it was, and all any of this type of email is, is a way to get names and 'cookie' tracking information for telemarketers and spammers -- to validate active email accounts for their own profitable purposes. 

You can do your Friends and Family members a GREAT favor by sending this information to them. You will be providing a service to your friends. And you will be rewarded by not getting thousands of spam emails in the future!

Do yourself a favor and STOP adding your name(s) to those types of listing regardless how inviting they might sound! Or make you feel guilty if you don't! It's all about getting email addresses and nothing more.

You may think you are supporting a GREAT cause, but you are NOT!

Instead, you will be getting tons of junk mail later and very possibly a virus attached! Plus, we are helping the spammers get rich! Let's not make it easy for them!

AND don't forget to get rid of ALL these forwarded addresses!!!

ALSO: Email petitions are NOT acceptable to Congress or any other organization - i.e. social security, etc. To be acceptable, petitions must have a "signed signature" and full address of the person signing the petition, so this is a waste of time and you are just helping the email trackers.

****************

With regard to the above on FORWARDING EMAILS, please read  https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/false-advice/

Bruce Kauffman

The link you have kindly provided says that Snopes did not send out the warning as indicated, however, in their article Snopes do seem to agree that emailed Petitions are not accepted by some and have many drawbacks http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/petition/internet.asp

Although there maybe doubt as to whether there are implanted cookies in many, I still feel that these emails are a way of collecting current/genuine email addresses which can be sold on to third parties or used by spammers. i.e. I receive many of this type of email, many of which contain the email addresses of all the other recipients. If I were unscrupulous I could then send emails to all those listed.