bcc
Thursday, 31 January 2008 1:32 pm by noelposted in people, tech | tags: e-mail, friends, spam, tech
i get a lot of forwarded mails from friends containing jokes, quotes, stories and whatever. when i open the mail i see this longish list of people which forwarded the mail to their friends who forwarded to their friends, etc. until the list of recipients is nine times longer than the actual message at which point it eventually arrives in my box.
this list of people usually includes names of the recipients and, of course, their e-mail addresses. this is a valuable resource for spammers. imagine that. someone else has gathered all the information they need for their spam bots and it just arrives in their mailbox. at no cost and all with very little work. they send their thanks, by the way. 
please don’t just forward that joke. take a little time to “clean it” of the e-mail addresses of others. after all, it came from a friend and you’re sending it out to your friends. give them that little courtesy along with your joke, quotes, stories and whatever.
i suggest that you place your own e-mail address in the to: field and then put all rest of the e-mail addresses of the people you’re sending that joke to in the bcc — blind copy furnish. this way, no other eyes will see the addresses of your friends.
