Email is one of the greatest connectors of the modern times. But it can also be one of the greatest nightmares. The cause? Evil spammers and scammers out to collect our valuable information, right? Actually most of the time it’s just our good, well-intentioned friends. Ever received that long religious message that then asked you to forward to ten people in order to be blessed by the end of the week? How about that message claiming Microsoft was giving off money to people who forwarded the message to as many people as they could? We all receive them; from self-help pep articles to tips on losing weight or preventing heart disease (most of them not written by health professionals); from the endless social site invitations to proclamations of spiritual or “energy” healing. Some workplaces even have their own version of ‘workplace spam;’ unsolicited, mostly never-opened announcements of birthdays, births, parties – even an occasional email fight copied to the unconcerned. But that is not the worst part. The worst is that most of us actually fall for the tricks and participate in spamming our internet community by forwarding useless messages to our friends. If you rarely invite someone to a party by word, what makes you think they will respond to an evite?
Now, there is nothing wrong with sending an occasional uplifting message or slideshow to a good friend (as long as they don’t object). I have found some of them quite interesting. And frankly sharing inspiring stories with people outside of your circles is indeed one of the pluses of the internet age. But like all good things, it can be overdone. It ceases to be an exercise in sharing if you become a forwarding center, sending off anything and everything to everyone in your address book. I had to abandon one of my email accounts because I had become part of a vicious forwarding network. Most of the people who do this do not even have the courtesy to blind copy the messages, so each one of their recipients, if they are into the forwarding business, harvests the email addresses, broadening their community of mostly unwilling victims.
If you regularly send forwarded messages to uninterested people, you are a spammer, period. If you send group messages when the message only concerned one person, you are a spammer, and therefore part of the problem in the “E-universe.” Many good email services offer efficient spam filters. In addition, you can create your own filters. I use gmail and have filters that trash all social site invitations as well as mail from certain forwarding culprits I know. But the ideal would be if the spam filters are reserved for true spam, not from our own colleagues. So, to be a good citizen of the world wide web, have a little respect and don’t be click-happy
1. Only forward messages to your ACTUAL friends. Most of your workmates and business contacts are actually not your friends and many people are too polite to tell you to stop.
2. As a rule, don’t forward messages to people you don’t regularly mail or talk to, don’t assume that others belief the same things you do. There are very few (if any) givens in this world.
2. Never pass on messages on unscientific health schemes, ponzi schemes, natural healing voodoo and superstitious nonsense. If you do, you are merely participating in the disinformation of the world.
3. If for some reason you have to send a message to many recipients, be kind enough to use the BCC (blind copy) to make sure your recipients’ privacy is protected.
To a better internet experience.
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