Words To Live By.
A friend who is a computer expert received the following directly from a
system administrator for a corporate system.  It is an excellent message
that ABSOLUTELY applies to ALL of us who send e-mails. Please read the short
letter below, even if you're sure you already follow proper procedures.

Do you really know how to forward e-mails? 50% of us do; 50% DO NOT.

Do you wonder why you get viruses or junk mail? Do you hate it? 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 & names. As the
messages get forwarded along, the list of addresses builds, and 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
his 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 do you stop it? Well, there are several easy steps:

(1) When you forward an e-mail, DELETE all of the other addresses that
appear in the body of the message (at the top). That's right, DELETE them.
Highlight them and delete them, backspace them, cut them, whatever it is you
know how to do. It only takes a second. You MUST click the "Forward" button
first and then you will have full editing capabilities against the body and
headers of the message. If you don't click on "Forward" first, you won't be
able to edit the message at all.

(2) Whenever 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 carbon
copy) field for listing the e-mail addresses. ;This is the way the people
you send to will only see their own e-mail address. If you don't see your
BCC: option click on where it says To: and your address list will appear.
Highlight the address and choose BCC: and that's it, it's that easy. When
you send to BCC: your 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 re-name 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 10 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 gotten an email that is 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 email can be forwarded on and on and
can collect thousands of names and email addresses. A FACT: The completed
petition is actually worth a couple of bucks to a professional spammer
because of the wealth of valid names and email addresses contained therein.
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 laundry list of names and email address on a petition.
(actually, if you think about it, who's supposed to send the petition in to
whatever cause it supports? And don't believe the ones that say that the
email is being traced, it just ain't so!) One of the main ones I hate is the
ones that say that something like, "Send this email to 10 people and you'll
see s omething great run across your screen." Or sometimes they'll just
tease you by saying 'something really cute will happen.' IT AIN'T GONNA
HAPPEN!!!!! (Trust me, I'm still seeing some of the same ones that I waited
on 10 years ago!) I don't let the bad luck ones scare me either, they get
trashed. (could be why I haven't won the lottery..) Before you forward an
'Amber Alert', or a 'Virus Alert', or some of the other ones floating around
nowadays, check them out before you forward them. Most of them are junk mail
that's been circling the net for YEARS! Just about everything you receive in
an email 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 it's
not, please don't pass it on.

So please, in the future, let's stop the junk mail and the viruses.