Open letter
Posted on June 15, 2011 by John
Thank you for thinking of others when you send and receive e-mail. E-mail is, hands-down, the greatest communications tool since the telephone. But its power makes it easy to abuse. You may already be abusing it, and not know. Here are a few tips that can make our e-mailing experience more pleasant:
- Please ask me before you start forwarding me things. It seems silly, but this common courtesy goes a long way to reducing the amount of junk mail you and I must deal with every day. I really don’t need to delete content that wastes my time and bandwidth.
- I don’t need some anonymously-written poem or heart-wrenching story to remind me how important friends are. I know you are my friend. If you want to show me you care, send me a sincere personal note to let me know how you are doing. I’d rather get that than an anonymous poem any day. Remember, real friends don’t shove this crap to others.
- Please don’t send me a message that instructs, begs or demands that I forward it on. You may not mean it that way, but these mandates imply that you do not trust me to decide for myself what is worthy of forwarding and what is not. To that extent, I often find these letters insulting and encourages me to report the abuse to the sender’s email / ISP provider. You may not be aware of this, but most (if not ALL) email providers strictly prohibit the use of their services for sending chain letters or other such spam. Check your terms of service for your email provider (either your home internet access or free web-email) for some rather surprising information.
- I rely on valid sources, such as well-established websites and the media, to keep me informed of things that may harm me or my server. Despite the fact that you can quickly and easily reach several people, there are no controls on e-mail to make it valid and reliable, thus I automatically discount any “news” that comes via e-mail. If the information you are sharing does not contain reliable sources that can easily verified, please don’t share it with me.
- Copy and paste the text you want to forward into a new message. Just hitting “forward” often adds indents or annoying “>>>>>” characters to let me know what’s old text and what’s new. The resulting message is confusing and difficult to read. If the message already has them in it, please take them out before you send it to me, or don’t send it at all.
- You don’t have to forward a message exactly as you received it. If it contains some stuff you like and other stuff you don’t, delete the parts you don’t like and forward only the parts you really want to share. This way, I don’t have to wade through a bunch of junk to find what you really want me to know.
- Please delete any old e-mail addresses that were in the message when you got it. Forwarding a message leaves the headers in place, revealing the e-mail addresses of everyone who has received and/or sent the message in the past. I don’t really want to know who got it before I did and I don’t want my e-mail address distributed in this manner. I’m sure you don’t, either.
- Use the Blind Copy (BC:) / Blind Carbon Copy (BCC:) feature of your e-mail, instead of the To: or Carbon Copy (CC:) fields to send a message to multiple recipients. BBC: prevents me from seing the addresses of other people to whom you’ve sent the same message. This keeps all of us safe and helps us control over who has our address.
In the month of March 2004 alone, I received no less than 300 viruses/worms/trojans etc. from people I have never sent mail or replied to…obviously my address was icluded in a chain letter to someone else, who got infected. When forwarding email, you have the ability and the responsibility to do what you can to reduce the spread of viruses…think about it.
- If you’re not sure about a message’s content or value, don’t send it “just in case.” You have one of the most powerful research tools in the world literally at your fingertips. It only takes a minute to check a letter out and you don’t need to be an academician or researcher to do it.
- Please don’t send me warnings about computer viruses. I installed anti-virus software on my computer and keep it updated regularly. It was well worth the investment for the peace of mind I now have. Most virus warnings circulating via e-mail are hoaxes designed to poke fun at people who don’t know better. By keeping my software updated, I always know better. I personally have had to answer service calls an astounding number of times to fix OS’s due to people believing that a certain .exe file was harmful after reading a chain letter, when in effect, it was an essential file for the computer.
-It would be wise to verify a threat at one of the many anti-virus company websites available, they keep their database up to date and ready for updates for their customers. There are free services available as well who provide such updates and services. It not only makes one look foolish for forwarding virus hoaxes, but you may in fact be doing more harm than good.
- Please don’t bother me about a sick, dying or missing child. I don’t want to seem heartless, but most of these e-mails are hoaxes, outdated, or contain too little information to be of any value. We all want to help a child in need, but putting a child into a chain e-mail can easily turn him or her into an Urban Legend, a fate I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
- How do you think some UCE spammers get your address…chain letters often hold a frightening amount of addresses to harvest. Btw, UCE = Unsolicited Commercial Email, or UBE = Unsolicited Bulk Email.
Email is great to co-ordinate actions (rallies, protests, etc.) but it shouldn’t be the extent of your actions. Contact your political representative…that is what they are for…yeah, start with that.
- Don’t feel compelled to share with me every joke you receive. There are many “joke-a-day” lists to which I can subscribe and get the same jokes. Also, I’ve been on the ‘net long enough to have seen the same jokes numerous times. Unless it is absolutely, positively, hands-down, without-a-doubt the funniest, rip-roaringest, knee-slappingest joke you’ve ever seen, please don’t forward it to me. Or if you can, just provide a link to the site.
- Please ignore messages that tell you to forward them on to X number of people to get a prize or earn cash. Businesses do not use e-mail chain letters to give away money or products. It won’t happen and it’s embarrassing when I see my friends falling for it. Also, forwarding a letter won’t make some animation appear after so many people receive it, that’s an old joke too. In all likelyhood with mass forwardings, the only thing you may be forwarding is your own unpopularity. I know many people who automaically delete messages with fwd: / do not delete / etc in the subject without reading the message due to an astounding amount of foolishness on the internet.
- Please don’t forward any e-mail I send you without my permission. I shared with you because I trust you. I don’t want my opinions sent to anyone I do not personally choose, nor do I want to risk being mistakenly attributed with something I’ve sent you. Please don’t put me at risk. Common courtesy does NOT end in the realm of email, but all too often what we consider in bad taste in real life flourishes on the internet.
- Please learn to type in text, and non-html. I personally don’t care for file sizes that are incredibly huge with overly large text and graphics. Usually I delete them without opening it, thus making your efforts to contact me useless. If you have something to say, I am sure it will just be as important in regular text format, and if it is a smaller file size, I will likely keep it for a longer period of time.
I appreciate that you count me among your friends and regular contacts. The tips above are intended to make us all better users of e-mail so our communication stays pleasant and enjoyable. Thank you for letting me get that off my chest. I look forward to corresponding with you.
Sincerely,