It never fails that every couple months I receive an email that provides me with a long list of email addresses and names that I didn't ask for.  The reason for this is always the same...no one knows how to properly and safely send email.

Ever wonder how your new email address end up getting "male enhancement" messages, or "local singles want to meet you" messages within a couple months of you creating the address?  It's not that you've signed up for newsletters or mailing lists, although that too doesn't help the situation.  It's because all of your friends that you just gave your new address to love to forward jokes, chain letters, etc. to everyone in their address book.  But that's not entirely the problem.  The problem is that when they add your email address to the message, they use the "To:" or "CC:" fields to do so.  This in turn allows everyone who receives that email to see your email address as well.

The problem is compounded when someone forwards the email that they received without removing the unnecessary headers and email addresses that are included in a forwarded message.  Now not only can you see the email addresses that the message was sent to, but you also have the emails and names of each person that it was forwarded to since the original message was sent.

Think about it this way.  Let's say that I send an email to 10 people.  Those 10 people then each send it to 10 of their friends.  Mathematically that's 110 people that have received that message.  Each of those people now send it to 5 people, and you can see how the number exponentially increases.  Eventually 10,000 people now have my email address, and that's a very conservative number.  By the time the message runs it's course it could potentially hit every country in the world and have been viewed by millions of people.

Now for the problem.

That original email gets sent around as I have stated, forwards and all.  Eventually it gets sent to a spammer, or someone who collects email addresses so that they can sell them to spammers.  Realistically they know that the majority of the email addresses in the message are good because at some point the message was sent to that address.  The only way it isn't good is if the address was mistyped, the account was recently closed, or the user no longer checks that account.  Even if 10% of the addresses are good, how many addresses could potentially be sold to the highest bidder?  Obviously that depends on what stage of the process the person received the message, but for our purposes let's say the message has been going around for a couple months.  If no one "cleaned up" the message (which most people do not) then that message could contains hundreds, if not thousands, or addresses...yours being one of them.

Along with the email address, it's very easy to also get the person's first and last name.  How many of you use your email programs address book to keep track of email addresses by the person's name?  So, when you click to include the person as a recipient, the email program enter the name, email, or combination of both into the message.  Now when someone clicks the "Reply to All" button, not only do they get the email address, but they can also call the person by their first and last name as well.  Add a little more seriousness to the situation now doesn't it?

The more concerning problem is this...how many of those addresses belong to kids under the age of 18?  How many of you have received a message that includes your kid(s) as one of the recipients?  How many people forwarded that same message on to someone else without removing your child's email address?  And how long is it going to be before your child's email address ends up on the receiving end of Viagra and Cialis ads or ads to meet local singles in your area or worse?  Now the situation is a lot more serious than what you originally thought.

So how do we resolve this problem?  One simple solution is to use the “BCC:” field available in 99% of the email programs available.  If you don’t see this field, you may need to look in your settings to turn it on, or click an area in the message you are sending for it to appear.  “BCC” means blind carbon copy.  This prevents the email addresses of everyone you are sending it to from being displayed in the message, and prevents it from being given to any of the recipients.  If you have doubts, try it yourself.  Send a test message to another email address that you have, along with 5 of your friends.  When you and your friends receive that message you will see that the list of emails isn’t available.

I encourage any and all questions that I can answer, and offer assistance if you are unsure of how to properly change your settings.  I have access to most of the online email services available, as well as email programs for Windows, Mac, and Linux.  Please feel free to get in touch with me…you already have my contact information.