Forwarding Emails – Harming people unknowingly

I thought of sharing this post with other victims who may have been at the receiving end of the ‘forwarding email’ phenomenon. I hope it will be convenient for them to just copy this text below and pass this along to the ones who torment them unintentionally ;-).

*****************************************

Hello Friends,

Please read this email very carefully.

1) Did you know that you may be unknowingly harming the people you care for most?

2) Did you know that you are innocently helping hackers and spammers?

I want to be the first to forward a good email to everyone I know:

It is now a common practice to receive forwarded emails from family and friends sharing some nice stories or useful information. If you notice the email thread, it usually contains email addresses in the “To” portion of the email. This means without your consent, your email address has now been broadcasted to hundreds of people. You did not have a say in that!

Most of these emails say forward it to 10 other people or all the people you care for. And what do you do next? You liked the email content so much that you forward that email to hundreds of other people you care for with their email addresses in the “To” portion :-). And you just broke their heart and harmed them forever.

Have you wondered how you receive so much spam mails?

I am a software programmer and I know how several computer hackers misuse these email addresses to infect your computers or sell lists of email addresses for marketing companies to spam you. They have sniffer programs that lookout for their secret keyword within the text of the email. Once they spot their email text, they are able to glean out all the email addresses in a forwarding chain.

Don’t forward an email. Instead, just copy the message content:

If you like an email message that you want to share with others. Just copy that message and compose a new email. Do NOT forward that email otherwise all the information including the sender’s details will get forwarded all over the world. Agreed that composing a new email takes a second extra but I am sure that you can do it.

Have you heard of Bcc?

Both GMail and Yahoo! Mail do not show the “Bcc” textbox by default. You have to click on “Add Bcc” or “Show Bcc” links and then it displays the textbox. The next time you forward any good emails, just put your email address in the “To” box and everyone else’s email addresses in the “Bcc” box. As simple as that. You will no longer be broadcasting the email addresses of the people you care for, without their permission. You will also no longer be contributing to the hackers and spammers.

Correct, just follow the simple steps – 1, 2 and 3:

1) Copy the message you liked in an email you received from someone.

2) Compose a new email (do NOT forward that earlier email)

3) Put everybody’s email address in “Bcc” box.

As simple as that and you will no longer be harming the people you care for! Make a fresh start today.

Eureka!!!

I have tried explaining the above 1, 2, 3 steps to several of my relatives and friends. I have even blocked the usual culprits because they just didn’t get it (and in the process lost their friendship). At that point their friendship was causing me more harm then good. I was lamenting what to do next to solve this ever-increasing problem and how do I convey this message to all the innocent people world over? “Eureka!!!”, I got an idea. Why not write an email that can easily turn into a viral forwarding chain?

Pass this message to all the people you know or …

I trust you guys to do the right thing and spread this message. But if some of you are planning to chicken out, then here are the usual tools to keep this message chain going… make use of threats, superstition, emotional blackmail, etc.

– If you read this email then send it to 10 other people or it will bring you bad luck.

– Rather than forward those stupid jokes, forward this useful email if you care for humanity.

– If you are a nice person, then please forward this to all the people you know.

But remember…  do NOT forward this email, instead use steps 1, 2 and 3

I am sure most of you reasonable humans will understand my message above. But can I trust you not to broadcast my contact details all over the world? Sure. So, just follow the steps 1, 2, 3 and you will be a better person.

Again, here are the steps:

1) Copy the message between the two lines of **** (asterisks),

2) compose a new email and

3) put email addresses of all the people you know in Bcc.

Send away!

*****************************************

Tags: do not broadcast my email address, do not help hackers, do not help spammers, forwarding email chain, how to pass good messages, use bcc