A friend who is a computer expert received the following directly from
a system administrator for a corporate system. It is an excellent
message that ABSOLUTELY applies to ALL of us who send e-mails.
Please read the short letter below, even if you're sure you already
follow proper procedures.

Do you really know how to forward e-mails? 50% of us do;
50% DO NOT.

Do you wonder why you get viruses or junk mail? Do you hate it?
Every time you forward an e-mail there is information left over from
the people who got the message before you, namely their e-mail
addresses & names. As the messages get forwarded along, the list of
addresses builds, and builds, and builds, and all it takes is for some poor
sap to get a virus, and his or her computer can send that virus to every
E-mail address that has come across his computer. Or, someone can
take all of those addresses and sell them or send junk mail to them in the
hopes that you will go to the site and he will make five cents for each hit.
That's right, all of that inconvenience over a nickel! How do you stop it?
Well, there are several easy steps:

(1) When you forward an e-mail, DELETE all of the other addresses that
appear in the body of the message (at the top). That's right, DELETE them.
Highlight them and delete them, backspace them, cut them, whatever it is
you know how to do. It only takes a second. You MUST click the "Forward"
button first and then you will have full editing capabilities against the
body
and headers of the message. If you don't click on "Forward" first, you
won't
be able to edit the message at all.

(2) Whenever you send an e-mail to more than one person, do NOT use
the To: or Cc: fields for adding e-mail addresses. Always use the
BCC blind carbon copy) field for listing the e-mail addresses.
This is the way the people you send to will only see their own e-mail
address. If you don't see your BCC: option click on where it says
To: and your address list will appear. Highlight the address and choose
BCC: and that's it, it's that easy. When you send to BCC: your message
will automatically say "Undisclosed Recipients in the "TO:" field of the
people who receive it.

(3) Remove any "FW :" in the subject line. You can re-name the
subject if you wish or even fix spelling.

(4) ALWAYS hit your Forward button from the actual e-mail you are
reading. Ever get those e-mails that you have to open 10 pages to read the
one page with the information on it? By forwarding from the actual page you
wish someone to view; you stop them from having to open many e-mails just
to see what you sent.

(5) To get rid of all of those forwarding carets () You can also
highlight and
copy the body of the e-mail with all of the s, paste it into Word, select
"Edit",
select "Replace" put one in the top choice box, nothing on the bottom, and
all (carets) are removed! Make the sentences work again, Edit the
document
to take out all of the empty space caused by the carets, and recut and paste
into your new email.

(6) Have you ever gotten an email that is a petition? It states a position
and
asks you to add your name and address and to forward it to 10 or 15 people
or your entire address book. The email can be forwarded on and on and can
collect thousands of names and email addresses. A FACT: The completed
petition is actually worth a couple of bucks to a professional spammer
because
of the wealth of valid names and email addresses contained therein. If you
want to support the petition, send it as your own personal letter to the
intended
recipient. Your position may carry more weight as a personal letter than a
laundry
list of names and email address on a petition. (Actually, if you think
about it, who's
supposed to send the petition in to whatever cause it supports? And don't
believe
the ones that say that the email is being traced, it just ain't so!)

One of the main ones I hate is the one that say that something like,"Send
this email
to 10 people and you'll see something great run across your screen." Or
sometimes
they'll just tease you by saying 'something really cute will happen.'
IT AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN!!!!! (Trust me, I'm still seeing some of the same
ones
that I waited on 10 years ago!)

I don't let the bad luck ones scare me either, they get trashed.
(could be why I haven't won the lottery..)

Before you forward an 'Amber Alert', or a 'Virus Alert', or some of the
other
ones floating around nowadays, check them out before you forward them.
Most of them are junk mail that's been circling the net for YEARS!
Just about everything you receive in an email that is in question can be
checked out at Snopes. Just go to www.snopes.com. It's really easy to find
out if it's real or not. If it's not, please don't pass it on.

So please, in the future, let's stop the junk mail and the viruses.

Finally, here's an idea!!! Let's send this to everyone we know
(but strip my address off first, please).
This is something that SHOULD be forwarded, and perhaps saved
to send to anyone who still sends s to you .

From: "Sylvia M"

snip

| ones floating around nowadays, check them out before you forward them.
| Most of them are junk mail that's been circling the net for YEARS!
| Just about everything you receive in an email that is in question can be
| checked out at Snopes. Just go to www.snopes.com. It's really easy to find
| out if it's real or not. If it's not, please don't pass it on.
|
| So please, in the future, let's stop the junk mail and the viruses.
|
| Finally, here's an idea!!! Let's send this to everyone we know
| (but strip my address off first, please).
| This is something that SHOULD be forwarded, and perhaps saved
| to send to anyone who still sends s to you .
|

Snopes is OK for general rumours.

An authorative source on email Hoaxes is the Hoax Buster division of the CIAC.
http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/HBHoaxIndex.html


--
Dave
http://www.claymania.com/removal-trojan-adware.html
http://www.ik-cs.com/got-a-virus.htm