Dear Family/Friend/Loved One/Acquaintance,
When you forward an email to me that was forwarded to you, and you include, say, 24 other people, now 24 other people have my email address. And while you may trust those other 24, you don’t know the 25 people they may forward it to, and each of those 25 people may forward to 25 more. At the end of the day, hundreds or thousands of people could have my email address that I don’t know. And perhaps one of those people works for a company that collects emails for spam. Or maybe one has a virus or Trojan horse on their computer that scans emails such as this looking for email addresses to add to a spam database. So, anytime you are sending an email that may get forwarded, you should always use “Blind Carbon Copy” (or BCC). Don’t use the regular “CC” or "To". You have to use the BCC because then all of the email addresses will be hidden from the other people.
That said, I never, ever read emails like these. You never know when one might contain an attached virus. And frankly, I just don’t find them interesting. So, they get deleted right away. My request to you is: no matter what you choose to do in the future regarding forwarding emails that you didn’t write, please don’t include me.
Anytime you want to write a personal note to me, feel free! Those I welcome.
Love,
Laurie
