To: Copy To: Blind Copy To:

By Jim "Gymbeaux" Brown, December 18, 2008

What on earth did we ever do before the Internet and more specifically the Email? Every day millions and millions of Emails are sent; most of them to me. Guilty – I am at fault for a lot of the Emails I receive because I have asked for them. Teachable moment here: I have asked for a great many Email online newsletters because you can receive some of the greatest thoughts in the world for free via these newsletters or Ezines; almost of them for FREE. I has been said, by me among many, that you should start and end your day by reading something positive and upbeat – you can easily do this by subscribing to the a couple of the hundreds of not thousands of available online newsletters or Ezines.

But I digress. The purpose of this Nugget is to bring awareness to an ever increasing problem or annoyance regarding Emails. We all receive I would guess at least 30 Email a day; some of us, yours truly included, many, many more. We do not have time to read them all so we pick and choose those we delete and those we read. Then comes the bigger decision, which ones are we going to send on to our friends? Here in lies problem number 1. There is nothing wrong with forwarding Emails but there is a problem in HOW you forward them. Can we agree that there are people in this world who would love to obtain YOUR Email and put YOU on their distribution lists? You know they are there. Therefore every time you forward an Email without properly addressing it AND JUST AS IMPORTANT, cleaning up the contents of the Email, you are sending out several people’s Email addresses if not hundreds and in some cases a thousand or more to everyone you FORWARD the Email to.

Whenever you decided to forward an email, look at the TO LINE. Usually there is only one address but their may be a smaller word that reads: SHOW DETAILS. If you click on SHOW DETAILS you will see all the Email Addresses that the email was sent to. In some cases you do not have to click on SHOW DETAILS, they all simply show up in the introduction to the Email you are forwarding.

What to do? Click on the FORWARD button then clean up the contents of the actual email. Highlight and delete any reference to someone’s Email address BEFORE you send your FORWARDED Email. This will remove any reference to someone’s Email address other than yours.

Have you ever received an Email that says if you don’t forward this to at least 10 of your best friends within the next 10 minutes, something horrible is going to happen to you or something good is not? Have you ever checked to see who else received the Email? Then have you thought, if this is true, (it isn’t), why your “friend” did not return the Email to you if you were so special in their life or vica versa?

There are organizations that send out these Emails for the single purpose of collecting Email address so they can send them direct to you to promote a product or agenda without relying on someone else to forward the Email.

Problem 2 occurs when YOU originate an Email to a group of people and instead of adding the addresses in the BBC (Blind Copy To for you-know-who). That means that the Email will be send to your group of people but no one will know who it went to because the Email addresses are all “blind to the recipients” and therefore the recipient as far a he or she knows, is the ONLY recipient.

There are times you may wan everyone to know such as in the case of an emergency. Who else was warned about this so you don’t have to warn them as well? These situations are very few and far between.

The Rule should be: NEVER MAKE VISIBLE ANYONE’S EMAIL ADDRESS OTHER THAN THE PERSON YOU ARE SENDING THE EMAIL TO. As stated above, if you are forwarding Emails, this will mean you MUST go into the text of the Email being forwarded and clean up the content.

This Nugget was created as a result of an Email I forwarded to everyone (but everyone did not know everyone else received it because everyone was a Blind Copy To (BBC). I immediately received several comments on just how appropriate the content was – thus this Nugget.

As Peggy McColl states in her book, Be A Dog With A Bone, “Drool Unto Others As You Would Have Them Drool Unto You.” That was followed by: “The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.” Andy Rooney (Had to add that because I thought it was funny). By the way, it is a GREAT book. www.Destinies.com.

When you send out Emails,

DON’T DROOL ALL OVER THE RECIPIENT!