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Add page to: Add page to: Having been on the Internet and email for a number of years now, I tend to go a little bonkers at the lack of thought people engage in when using email. I think people should think a little longer about if everyone they are forwarding a third-party message to will actually appreciate the message they are being sent.
In particular when people do forward a message to a number of parties (unless there is a good reason not to) they should ensure they are respecting everyone's privacy and use the BCC field. If they don't use the BCC field at least one of the recipients is sure to forward the message along with everyone's email addresses to everyone in their address book and so on and in the meantime people's privacy is being violated by having their email address shared randomly with strangers world wide. Great!.
If you send me something that I recognise as a hoax or send me spam, it is likely I will send a reply to you and everyone else whose email address I extract from your message either telling you it is a hoax or, when I can be bothered, containing a similar spiel to the following:
Hi Everyone,
I have received an email that has been forwarded a number of times that included your email address - which is pretty disturbing considering it means that I and anyone else who received the forwarded message now have your email address to do whatever we want with - even if you have never personally given us your email address or don't even know us.
Fortunately for you, I have no intention of using your email address for malicious purposes. And... unless you work with me or are a friend or associate of mine your email address is not, and will not be, stored in my address book.
I thought that rather than just ignore the issue, I would provide you with some information on how you might cut down on the amount of junk email you receive and provide you with some basic information on how to protect your own privacy and that of others when emailing to a group.
I originally wrote a summarised version of this information for my clients, however whether you are using your email and computer for home, work or study the information listed below will be relevant. You may wish to print it out. Please feel free to forward this message on to other people that want to avoid spam and viruses and who care about their own privacy and that of others.
Instead of putting the email addresses of all the people you are sending the message to in the 'To' field, put it in the 'BCC' (blank carbon copy) field.
This will mean that when people receive the email, they will know it is from you and will get their own copy of the message but they will not get the names and, more importantly email addresses of everyone else to whom you are sending the message.
If you cannot see the BCC field in the same area with the TO, CC and SUBJECT fields, when you have a message ready to send in Microsoft Outlook go into the view menu while in an email message and select either 'BCC field' or 'All Headers' - this will turn on the BCC field for the current and all future messages. You should be able to turn on the BCC field regardless of the email client/software you are using
When you enter email addresses in the BCC field rather than in the 'To' or 'CC' field, all recipients will still get the message but they will not be able to see who else you sent the message to and therefore you will be protecting everyone's right to privacy and ensuring that their email addresses are not being retrieved or forwarded and used to send them spam (junk email / unsolicited and unwanted email messages).
Remove all headers from the email and any signatures (name, address, telephone, fax, etc) that may have been forwarded with the emails. By doing this you are protecting the privacy of your friends and colleagues.
eg of a message header:
-----Original Message-----
From: Jane Doe [mailto:i_HATE_spam@janedoe.com.cx]
Sent: Friday, February 06, 2004 1:01 PM
To: Someone (someones_email_address@somewhere_or_something.com.cx)
Subject: Photo of Rachel *is* a hoax
It is also frustrating to have to scroll past a heap of headers and other junk to try and locate the message. You should be able to see the actual message straight away.
By removing all excess data you are not only ensuring people get the intended message but at the same time you will be making the email smaller, helping it to download quickly - and it will take up less storage space on the recipients computer.
There are dishonest people out there that want to play on your emotions and get your money or the sick joy that comes from having their spam/junk mail forwarded all over the world.
(The Chain Letter on the November 2005 Friendly Spam page is a tongue in cheek chain letter that addresses a number of hoax emails that have been going around the 'Net - some for years. It's also a perfect example of the types of myths that will turn up in your inbox on a regular basis, being passed off as the truth. (It includes links to more information about each hoax).
Be very cautious about forwarding emails that tell you whenever the email is forwarded a cash donation will be made (it won't). Also check emails that talk about winning money, prizes, health warnings or promise that if you forward the message to a certain number of people something will appear on your screen. Most of these forwarded messages are hoaxes. One or two of them may be true.
It does not take much effort to check to see if the message is a hoax before forwarding it on... and if it is a hoax, you save yourself and others the bother of sending around something that is more likely to annoy people rather than to help anyone.
Be careful about clicking on links in emails that are unsolicted or that you are not sure where they are coming from - often security and password update emails that appear to be coming from paypal or your bank are hoaxes that are trying to get you to reveal your login and password. Best to check with paypal or your bank unless you are sure. False links are used for a number of purposes, below you can find an article about obscured links.
AVG Free Edition is a well-known anti-virus protection tool. AVG Free is available free-of-charge to home users for the life of the product! Rapid virus database updates are available for the lifetime of the product, thereby providing a high-level of detection capability. AVG Free is easy-to-use and will not slow your system down (low system resource requirements). Caveat emptor/disclaimer (from a friend):
Thanks but no thanks it was AVG free that killed my last HD, something with update 7 clashed with SP2 and killed a lot of peoples computers so I will not be touching it, I use PC-cillen or how ever you spell it. AVG is evil, EEEVIL, I say.
If you get an email telling you if you forward it you'll get cash, if you send your details a crate of champage will be delivered to you or giving you an almost unbelievable deal... please, please, please go to Snopes or similar and do a keyword search to find out if it is a hoax or not before forwarding. If the unbelievable deal is being "offered" by a company you are familiar with... check their website (a lot of companies put warnings about hoaxes on their home page now). It will save you looking stupid.
When you create a password, don't use plain English words, names or birth dates of your pets and family or even your favourite football team's name... it is too easy to guess. It is a good idea to use a mix of upper case (capitals) and lower case letters, numbers and special characters (eg. ! @ $) in your password to make it harder for people to guess.
It is strongly recommend you don't share your passwords with others - especially if you have access to sensitive data - and that you don't write in the front of the diary that sits on your desk all day where others can easily find it (ditto for sticking it in the desk draw or on your monitor) - it just makes it too easy for others to get hold of it and use it for malicious purposes.
It is also advisable to use the windowsupdate or mactopia sites to get security patches for your computer.
To get the latest updates for Windows and Microsoft products you can go to the Windows Update Centre where you will be provided with a list of updates available for your computer.
To get the latest updates and help for Macintosh computers you can go to Microsoft's Mactopia
A good source of information on computer and internet viruses and hoaxes is the website computer virus info centre - before forwarding on warnings about computer viruses, public health issues, public dangers or petitions check that it is for real and not just a hoax at:
Newer versions of web browsers tend to contain security patches to fix issues identified in older versions of the browser so it makes sense to ensure you have a current version of your browser. An added bonus is that websites will look heaps better and work better in more recent web browsers.
Get the latest releases of web browsers from:
A more complete list of available web browsers can be found at:
What does spam (junk mail) have to do with security? A lot of computer viruses are distributed via email.
When you send an email out to a number of parties, use the BCC (blank carbon copy) field - in outlook/exchange, you will be able to turn this on by selecting either 'BCC Field' or 'All Headers' from your the 'view' menu in the message.
When you enter email addresses in the BCC field rather than in the 'To' or 'CC' field, all recipients will still get the message but they will not be able to see who else you sent the message to and therefore you will be protecting everyone's right to privacy and ensuring that their email addresses are not being retrieved or forwarded and used to send them spam (junk email / unsolicited and unwanted email messages).
If you get a lot of spam there are a number of products available to check your mail as it comes in that will remove spam from your inboxes an example of this is SpamNet by Cloudmark
When you get a spam message trying to sell you something or trick you into parting with your money - don't respond. Even if the message provides an unsubscribe/opt-out option. If you do, chances are is that all you will achieve is verifying that the email address they used to send the message to you is a valid email address and you will therefore get a lot more spam. The best approach is to simply delete the message.
exception If you recognise the message as being from a company you have dealt with in the past and you believe they are reliable and trusty-worthy the opt-out/unsubscribe option is most likely to be valid (unlike most of the spam/junk mail messages you will receive). Most reputable companies that collect customer details for any purpose will have a privacy policy on their website that outlines whether they store your details, what details they store, how use the details - including whether they pass them on to other companies and much more.
Often email addresses are forged, or spoofed which means the message appears as somewhere or someone other than the actual source it did come from. There is little that the actual owner of the email address can do to stop someone else forging their address so there is no point in getting angry at them. This is just another reason for you to be very cautious about opening file attachments that appear to come from a friend or co-worker that you were not expecting or that seem a bit odd or out of character. If in doubt don't open the attachment unless your friend/co-worker has confirmed that the attachment is a legitimate file they have sent you.
Display file extensions (even for known files) in your Windows Explorer (eg. for word the file extension is .doc). You can turn this on by opening Windows Explorer, going to the Tools menu and selecting 'folder options'.
In the advanced [view] settings, ensure the box 'hide file extensions for known file types' is not ticked.
How will this help? Often viruses are run as scripts when you open what seems to be a normal file attachment - word, PowerPoint, etc.
This is done by giving them an extra file extension, for example .doc.vbs - because the real file extension name is hidden (the bit at the end .vbs) because the computer has recognised the first extension (.doc) you computer may display the file as being a Microsoft Word (*.doc) file instead of a VBScript (*.vbs) file. If you are displaying all file extensions it would be displayed as file.doc.vbs - so you would know that it was not a word file and could avoid opening it.
The .vbs extension - or any unrecognised file extension/type is reason for suspicion. Avoid opening files with double file extensions and unless you expected a script file and know exactly what it is, just don't open script files. At all.
Alternatively, if this all seems to hard, just avoid opening Powerpoint, Word and Excel documents you receive as forwarded emails that you were not expecting and that have not been sent specifically to you for work or personal reasons.
Check to see which software application (eg. Word, Illustrator, Photoshop, Acrobat, Script) a file extension (eg. .doc, .ai, .psd, .pdf, .vbs) is related to or to check what type of file it is (eg. movie, audio, text, script, binary, etc):
Be careful about what software you install on your computer - some software is designed to collect information about you and to market at you, pop up annoying ads at you and generally drive you crazy. To detect/remove adware and spyware use products such as ad-aware
If you are ever asked if you wish to install a 'sponsor' program... best bet is probably to tick the NO option (if you are given the choice - for example as per installation for MSN Plus). Generally if it is a choice and you accidentally say yes, you can uninstall the program it was installed with (Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs) and try again. If you don't get the choice, then don't reinstall the host program.
(get a definition of adware and spyware from: http://www.pcwebopedia.com/TERM/s/spyware.html)
If you get the nasty LOP toolbar that takes over Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer (you will know it if you get it) there is a good forum called 'Driving with Dawn' where if you are willing to do some reading you will get some information on how to get rid of it - or information to help someone else get rid of it for you....
Don't send files (eg. movies, images) or whole articles or web pages when you can simply send a web address. It is much more polite to send a link to a web page when they are available.
Don't just have a joke list - think about who you send every file to - is it something you know that the person you are sending the message to will find amusing, will like or appreciate? If in doubt, don't send it.
If you do have a joke list (or any kind of list), ensure that the people on your joke check that people are happy to be in that mailing/distribution list and let them know that the message went to a whole joke list [perhaps in each email or by inserting the words 'Joke List:' (or whatever) in front of the actual subject line] - this way you are giving them the option to request to be removed if they no longer want to receive every joke you send out.
Some people have great senses of humour, but have been on the Internet for a long time and therefore receive the same joke or message from lots of people, or it is something that is doing the rounds again after a few years... if people don't want jokes, it is no reflection on you and they probably would still love to get emails from you, but just ones that give them a line or a whole spiel about what you have been up to - rather than a joke.
Typing messages in all capitals in an email, via sms/text or over messenger/chat sessions is the equivalent of shouting. If it is a choice between all lower case or all upper case - go for the lower case, it is easier to read anyway (see http://www.webstyleguide.com/type/case.html)!
Put subject lines in your email to help recipients easily identify relevant emails from spam. This will not stop or fix anything but it may stop your mail from being moved automatically to a spam folder and will help recipients to quickly identify emails that are relevant and important to them. Make your subject lines relevant to the email you are sending so that the person can easily recognise the message months later if searching for it.
PC Webopdedia is a great place to educate yourself about computer and Internet terminology - as well as getting quick reference guides on a number of things, including a Guide to Combating Spam.
THE END :)
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