Ok, now I have to do my obligatory plug for a safe and saner internet. This weeks plug is for the “BCC:” field. After doing some research on spam and viruses I found out that one of the main ways that viruses are propagated, *and* one of the best ways for spammers get new email addresses, is from “To:” fields. The “To:” field is wide open and can seen by all. If an email with a bulk “To:” field somehow is fwd’d to a spammer (not as likely), or if it gets fwd’d to a computer with a virus/adware/spyware (extremely likely) then all those email addresses in the “To:” field are now known to said malicious code/spammer. An email containing pass-along information is the most susceptible because it gets fwd’d on and on, each fwd tacks on a new list of “To:” fielders. If you think it might, or want your email to be fwd’d around, have some respect and discretion for the email addresses of your friends, family, and coworkers, use “BCC:”. Thank you and happy interneting!

FMI: Check out my last WWWPSA: BCC for Privacy!

I found this interesting page using Google when searching for guides on how to appropriately use email. The source is link is http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~watrous/bcc-for-privacy.html. Instead of sending you there, and stealing their bandwidth, I copied it here. Please visit this site and read up! I hope you find it as interesteing and usefull as I did.

3/30/05 - At the request of the orriginal author I have removed the copied content. I have edited the post accordingly. Please visit the linked website and read the article (it is well worth reading and thinking about) and follow the links provided for more information.