Respect My Email Address
I know you have good intentions when you email me all those jokes & virus warnings, but for some of you, every email you send me is like a turd falling into my drink.*
(*It’s not really, but I just love that line from Bill Hicks)
Why?
Well, it’s not the content of the message I object to; everyone loves lolcats. God knows I do. The problem is in your use of the CC: field.
When you CC: a whole bunch of people, ask yourself this simple question:
Once you send that message, do you trust every person who will read it?
Before you answer, I’m not talking about the recipients on your CC list. I’m talking about all the people they will forward it onto.. and the people they in turn will forward it to..
Let’s assume that every person who receives that email, in turn forwards it to 5 more within 1 day of receiving it.
1 week later, that’s 5 x 5 x 5 x 5 x 5 x 5 x 5 (or 5^7) which is 78,125 people.
2 weeks later: 5^14 = 6,103,515,625 people.
Most won’t wait a day, some will take less than 5 minutes to foward it on.
At this point you might be saying “Wow, that’s a lot of people. But, so what?”
Well, you are aware that most people don’t remove the list of previous recipients before forwarding messages, right? In fact, you probably didn’t when you sent them to me.
What you may not realise, is that there are spammers and scammers around the world that are dedicated to one simple task: harvesting email addresses. They love them. Each one is like a little gold nugget. They have powerful tools to collect them from web pages, forums and best of all, forwarded emails.
Forwarded emails are the richest source, because most of the time they contain up-to-date valid addresses.
So next time you reach for the send button, think for a moment; Didn’t you really mean to use BCC? All email clients have that option, though sometimes you have to switch it on in the settings.
BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) will ensure that your recipients can’t see each other, and you’ve helped me from having to change my email address for the hundredth time.
Thanks!
P.S. Please refrain from forwarding any kind of warning without researching it on the internet first. Just type the subject line into Google, and see what comes up.. or try Snopes.
Oh and those virus warnings? I’m on a Mac. We don’t get viruses.
Have a nice day.
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