Ever wonder how or why you get viruses or junk mail?  Every time you forward an e-mail, there is information left over from the people who got the message before you; namely their e-mail addresses and names.  As the messages get forwarded, the list of addresses 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 e-mail address that has come across their 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 can you stop it?  Follow these easy steps. 

1.      First, you must click the “forward” button and then you will have full editing capabilities against the body and headers of the message. Then you can delete all of the other addresses that appear in the body of the message (at the top).  Highlight and delete, backspace them, cut them – whatever it is you know how to do. 

2.      When you send an e-mail to more than one person, do not use the To: or Cc: fields for adding e-mail addresses.  Always use the BCC: (blind courtesy copy) field for listing the e-mail addresses.  This way, the people you send to will only see their own e-mail address.  If you don’t see your BCC: option, click where it says To: and your address list will appear.  Highlight the address and choose BCC:.  When you send to BCC:, you message will automatically say “Undisclosed Recipients” in the To: field of the people who receive it.

3.      Remove any “FW:” in the subject line.  You can rename the subject if you wish or even fix spelling.

4.      Always hit your forward button from the actual e-mail you are reading.  Ever get those e-mails that you have to open ten pages to read the one page with the information on it?  By forwarding from the actual page you wish someone to view, you stop them from having to open many e-mails just to see what you sent.

5.  Have you ever received an e-mail that was a petition?  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 e-mail can be forwarded on and on and can collect thousands of names and e-mail addresses.  Fact:  The completed petition is actually worth a couple of bucks to a professional spammer because of all the valid names and e-mail addresses.

Do not put your e-mail address on any petition.  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 long list of names.  (And do not believe the ones that say the e-mail is being traced; it just isn’t so.)

Some other e-mails to delete and not forward:

1.      When they say something like, “Send this e-mail to ten people and you will 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.

2.      Don’t let the bad luck ones scare you either; they should be trashed.

3.      Before you forward an “Amber Alert”, or a “Virus Alert”, or some other e-mails floating around nowadays, check them out before you forward them.  Most of them are junk mail that’s been circling the net for years. 

4.      Just about everything you receive in an e-mail that is in question can be checked out at “Snopes”.  Just go to www.snopes.com.  It’s really easy to find out if it’s real or not. 

If you follow this advice, we can help stop junk mail and viruses. 

Respectfully submitted,

Barb Henderson, President, Local 730, UAW