Email Tips
By following these suggestions you will protect the privacy of your online friends and reduce the probabily of their emails being harvested by spammers (people who send unsolicited annoying messages, or spam).
There are many useful email etiquette rules that should be followed, but in this document I will present only the ones crucial for preventing spam.
1. Put the email addresses in the BCC field
Put the email addresses in the BCC (blind carbon copy) field instead of putting them in the TO field, when emailing a lot of people, in order to avoid having their emails exposed in the message (this should be done especially in the case when the recipients don't know each other).
Go to your contact list (address book) and check the people you want to send the message to, then click on the 'Send'/'Compose message' button. At this point all addresses appear as a comma separated list in the TO field.
Make sure the BCC field is visible (click "Add BCC" if the field is not visible).
Click inside the TO field, select all (Ctrl-A, or right click and pick 'Select All'), cut (Ctrl-X, or right click and pick 'Cut'), then click inside the BCC field and paste (Ctrl-V, or right click and pick "Paste').
Put your own address in the empty TO field (you will receive a copy of the message, you can delete later if you don't like to keep it).
Write a pertinent subject and a clear and respectful message. Please spellcheck the text, if the option is available.
The message is ready to be sent!
2. CUT & PASTE rather than FORWARD
When forwarding messages always remove the part revealing the addresses of senders and recipients of the original message (select and delete/cut the part with the email headers). It is always better to copy the body of the message and include it in a brand new message (repeatedly forwarding a message can make it almost illegible because the message is succesively quoted, and not only the mailer programs use different styles of quoting but sometimes they also restrict the length of the lines of text and mess up the formatting).
Compare the following two excerpts (keep in mind that there are more extrem cases):
3. Avoid redistributing JUNK
Do not distribute chain letters, scams, urban legends, false rumors and other useless emails. Do not forward a message just because the message claims that by doing so you will gain something (e.g. love, money) or will help a good cause (e.g. cancer patients, missing kids), these emails are always hoaxes. However, if the message is actually interesting, you can redistribute it, but please remove the part that instructs the receiver to broadcast it. I sanitized even slide shows (e.g. test_for_professionals.pps).
The end results of SPAM are far more nocive than inboxes flooded with countless ridiculous offers, scams and offensive materials. Spam is one of the most common way in which viruses, worms and spyware find their way to people's computers. Please protect yourself by using anti-virus, anti-spyware sofware (free options are also available, e.g. AVG and AdAware), and do yourself a favor and download Firefox!
Please educate people about these issues by emailing this page to them.
