How to Forward Email

Someone suggested a few weeks ago that I repeat my column about how to forward an email appropriately. I covered the topic before, but not recently; it never hurts to revisit it.

Do you know how to forward emails? Most of us DO NOT.
Do you wonder why you get viruses or junk mail?
Do you hate it as much as I do?

Every time you forward an email there is information left over from the people who got the message before you, namely their email 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 email address that has come across his 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. 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 an email, delete all of the other addresses that appear in the body of the message (at the top). That's right, you should delete them. Highlight them and delete them, backspace over them, cut them, whatever you know how to do. It only takes a second. Click the 'Forward' button first to have full editing capabilities of the message. I particularly dislike having to scroll through email addresses before I get to the message.

(2) Whenever you send an email to more than one person, always use the Bcc: (blind carbon copy) field for listing the e-mail addresses. The people you send to will only see their own email address. This applies to all email, new, reply and forwards. ALWAYS USE THE Bcc: FIELD. You don't have to put any addresses in the To: or Cc: fields in order to send the message.

If you don't see your Bcc: option on your email template click on where it says To: and your address list will appear. Highlight the address and then choose Bcc: in that window, and that's it, it's that easy. Click Okay at the bottom of the window when you have added all recipient addresses and they will be in a new field labeled Bcc: in your message template. Using Bcc: in your message will automatically say 'Undisclosed Recipients' in the To: field of the people who receive it. That way you aren't sharing all those addresses with every Tom, Dick or Harry.

(3) Remove any 'FW:' in the subject line. You can re-name the subject if you wish or even fix spelling. Any extraneous letters and characters from the prior email should be removed before you send them on as a courtesy to the next reader.

This one is very important, so please read and heed it.

(4) ALWAYS use your Forward button from the actual page you are reading. Ever get those emails that you have to open 10 pages to read the one page with the information on it? By Forwarding from the actual page you wish someone to view, you relieve them of having to open any attachments just to see what you sent. Attachments often spread viruses and other malicious and harmful add-ons. That is why avoiding them is really important!

To clarify, once you have gotten to the page where the actual information or attachment is, click on the Forward button from there without closing pages back to the first one. In the case of attachments, where it is a video, or pictures, or any graphics, close the attachment and then immediately click on the Forward button. The attachment will still be on your forwarding email, and you can edit the body of the message before sending it.

(5) Have you ever gotten a petition email? 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. 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 they contain. Actually, email petitions are not valid in the first place. Valid petitions must include address or some form of identification that would enable the recipient to verify the signer exists.

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 anyway.

(6) Then there are the emails 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 isn’t going to 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 deleted. If I really like the message and I decide I want to forward it, I always delete the reward/punishment lines at the end before sending it.

(7) Before you forward an Amber Alert, or a Virus Alert, or some of the other emails floating around nowadays, check them out. Most of them are junk mail that's been circling the net for Years! Most will be inaccurate or completely false. 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. It’s really easy to find out if it is 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. Follow the seven steps above and clean them up prior to forwarding.