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One of my biggest gripes about e-mail is the
people that forward on "jokes" and suchlike and how
careless they are about about disclosing other peoples e-mail
addresses.
Just think how many e-mails you have received where your e-mail address
is included amongst a list of other recipient's.
Even worse is the fwd fwds.... sometimes these forwards can easily
contain over a hundred or more e-mail addresses.
Not only can it be annoying, but dangerous for several reasons.
I'll list some, starting off with the least to the worst:-
~ Spam
Someone may use these addresses to create mailing lists which can
be sold on to marketing (spamming) agents.
~ Disclosure of Privacy
It discloses your address to 3rd parties whom you may not wish to
know your e-mail address.
~ Worms and Virii
These lists are used by worms with their own SMTP engines to replicate
themselves.
This is one of the reasons why worms such as KLEZ was so virulent,
and spread wildly particularly amongst chat communities.
If we didn't do the fwd fwd's then the risk of exposure from such
worms would be way less.
Some worms can also use these lists to sign e-mail addresses up for
unwanted spam.
~ Dangerous
A little while ago I rec'd an e-mail and rather than take up too much
space on this page, you can read the e-mail here.
- granted it is rather long, but it really should make you think about
what can happen.
It says its a true story. I don't know if it actually is or not, but
it very well could be.
Would you really like this to happen to you or someone you
send mail onto?
Please think before you use the To and Cc fields or use the Fwd Button.
Follow the advice below on how to stop it.
Clean up mail before forwarding it on.
~ It only takes a couple of seconds to highlight
and delete the other addresses.
Use the Bcc field
rather than Cc when you forward mail to multiple recipient's.
If you use Outlook/Express and don't
see the Bcc field it can be opened as such:-
Open up a new mail window as if you were about to send a new
mail.
From the Toolbar -----> View ----> All Headers.
(Make sure this is ticked)
You will now see the Bcc field, which stops 3rd parties from
viewing other e-mail addresses.
Some webmails such as hotmail require you to input an address
in the "to" field.
Create a new "user" in your address book with an
invalid e-mail address such as everyone@nowhere.com and use
this address in the "To field"
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