[TIPS] email no-no

For the fourth time this week I have received an email in which my name appeared - along with about 100 others - in the TO: field of the email. This is a DEFINITE no-no!

If you need to send an email to a lot of people there are lots of ways of doing that while still protecting their privacy. In the to: field, put your OWN email address, for example. Then, in the BCC (NOT the CC) field, put all the other addresses, That way nobody else will see all those addresses.

Have you ever received a forward from someone and  you've had to scroll down through several pages of headers that contained dozens and dozens of email addresses? Talk about a spammer's dream!

There is a website (that I've mentioned before) called ThanksNo (http://www.thanksno.com) that you might consider sending to the person who puts your email address in with all those others for all to see. The site does a nice - polite- job of telling the person what they did something wrong. It isn't quite as firm as I'd prefer, but it's a good start. So, simply reply to that person and include the address listed above. That way your own frustrations don't come out in the tone of your email when you reply to tell them to remove your name from their list if they're going to INSIST on ... er. well.. you see what I mean. :-)

This is NOT just a pleasantry. It's not a LAW, either. But, it IS proper email etiquette that everyone SHOULD abide.