Sunday, June 3, 2007

Clean Up Those Emails – They’re “Dirty”

Yes, I know it’s what we want to do: let the whole world know EVERYTHING that we think is important or interesting or funny or clever or ... fill-in-the-blank. So, if you (and I’m in this category) just have to tell us all, you (and I) don’t have to tell us who EVERYONE is. Instead of using the “To:” field, use the BCC field. BCC doesn't mean "Brings Copious Contacts." That's what we're getting now. BCC means “blind carbon copy.” By doing this, none of the other email addresses will appear in the recipient’s email. The next step is to delete ALL of the email addresses in the body of the email to be forwarded. It’s really quite simple: just highlight them and press “Del” (for Delete). An added bonus is that it's easier to find the forwarded message, rather than having to scroll down many pages (in some cases) to find it. We all do have other treasures to find.

There’s one more consideration. Look at the many addresses in emails that are forwarded to you. How many of them do you know? (Yes, I know that you want to know them all. You might miss out on an interesting person. Well, there are trade-offs in life. Get over it.) Remember that spammers can get email addresses by “mining” those many-forwarded emails. And we certainly don’t need any more SPAM, do we? I didn’t think so. Cheers!

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