Minimizing Spam – Stop the Forwarding Fiend

[bamalli]

Minimizing Spam – Stop the Forwarding Fiend

Create an email address just for shopping online, registering at websites and any other places that might sell your email address to a spammer. Give your main address to no one except your friends and family.

But there is a problem with that, too. Do you know someone who forwards absolutely everything that comes through their inbox? That can be the source of the spam you get. Look at a forwarded email; see all those email addresses in it? Spammers are now finding forwarded emails, harvesting all of the addresses throughout the email and putting them on their address lists.

That means that you as well as all the other people who are getting these forwarded emails will probably soon be receiving a whole lot of junk! It might be hard to ask your friend to stop forwarding everything to you, but you can suggest that they use BCC. That means that your email address will be hidden from all the other addresses. Here is how you do that (and you might want to send this article to any forwarders you know):

Click Forward in the email like you usually do. Some email programs will have a BCC box. If yours does, input all the emails address you want to send to in the BCC box. If your email program does not have a BCC box, click in the CC or Copy to box, type an Open Parenthesis (Shift 9) input all the email addresses and then type a Close Parenthesis (Shift 0). Input your own email address in the To box. Send the email as usual.

Each recipient will receive the email but no other email addresses will display. If the recipient decides to send it on, none of the other email addresses will go out with the email.

In the next edition of this newsletter: Minimizing Spam – Never Respond to Spam