Forward e-mails!!!
Apr. 13th, 2005 09:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
janestarz[SET MODE=$RANT]
The next person to send me a forward to my personal e-mail address will receive an e-mail bomb in reply. Double the amounts of e-mails in the bomb if this was sent to my business address. I'm serious people! How often must I tell you not to do this? Firstly, I don't fucking care about what kind of nice pictures some crazy son of a bitch racked together via Google and pasted into some kind of slideshow to make me contemplate the beauty of the world/sadness of life/true meaning of existence. Secondly, I run Linux with no OpenOffice installed. How the fuck do you people expect me to open a .pps-file even if I wanted to?
Fact is, about half of my friends understand the basics of netiquette. The other half frequently get me ranting at them via e-mail in the hope to get it through their thick skulls into their pea-sized brains that if you decide to send an e-mail to multiple persons, you would use the BCC field. Not the To, the freaking BCC. And why? Why you ask me?
BCC means blind copy to (or so Kmail tells me). It means that by using the bcc field the recipients will only see that you sent the e-mail to that particular recipient. Which means (for those to whom I have to spell it out), that nobody gets a whole sick list of mail addresses of people you don't know at the top of the e-mail. Because of aforementioned fact, you will have 2 e-mail addresses in the headers of your mail. The sender and the recipient. But every recipient will only see their own e-mail address, foregoing the list.
Hence, all the other people can't see your e-mail address either if you're one of the recipients. Hence, no stranger you have no idea what they'll do with your e-mail address can't reach you by e-mail. Nor can they sell your e-mail address to spammers Nor can viruses that infect inboxes (from aforementioned strangers who might not take to security as you do) harvest your mail address.
Just imagine, a friend of yours sends something to a list of people, say 10, and your mail address is in the headers. 9 of these people (ofcourse, you're smarter than that) forward it each to 10 more people. This means that, provided no double friends receive it, your e-mail address is now known to 90 people. And there's no telling how smart the friends of those friends are. Or if they have good virus-scanners. Or if they even know that the free iPod thing is just a scam to harvest mail adresses. Or if they're quite stupid and don't (want to) see that an e-mail address can be abused.
In other words: Treat your mail address as you would your phone number!
[/MODE]
And for those nimwits who will read this, let's set up a nice checklist of things to do when you have a computer and you want to keep using it for a while (not having it infected by viruses/hacked and turned into a zombie/destroyed/slowed down/etc etc).
1) If you must use windows, have a firewall and viruschecker installed. Use Netscape Navigator, Opera, or Firefox if you want to avoid several big bugs in Internet Explorer.
2) Check for viruses each month, or even biweekly. (Running a complete system check will take several hours. You can have it run at night).
3) Keep Windows and your Viruschecker updated. Also check for updates on your firewall every now and then.
4) Do not open attachments, ever.
5) Do not ever, ever ever forward e-mails, it will make you harder to spam.
6) Never reply to spam. This will show spammers your e-mail address works. It is more likely to double the amount of spam you get.
7) Treat e-mail adresses like phonenumbers: they're private!
8) Give your friends this list.
9) obey these rules!.
The next person to send me a forward to my personal e-mail address will receive an e-mail bomb in reply. Double the amounts of e-mails in the bomb if this was sent to my business address. I'm serious people! How often must I tell you not to do this? Firstly, I don't fucking care about what kind of nice pictures some crazy son of a bitch racked together via Google and pasted into some kind of slideshow to make me contemplate the beauty of the world/sadness of life/true meaning of existence. Secondly, I run Linux with no OpenOffice installed. How the fuck do you people expect me to open a .pps-file even if I wanted to?
Fact is, about half of my friends understand the basics of netiquette. The other half frequently get me ranting at them via e-mail in the hope to get it through their thick skulls into their pea-sized brains that if you decide to send an e-mail to multiple persons, you would use the BCC field. Not the To, the freaking BCC. And why? Why you ask me?
BCC means blind copy to (or so Kmail tells me). It means that by using the bcc field the recipients will only see that you sent the e-mail to that particular recipient. Which means (for those to whom I have to spell it out), that nobody gets a whole sick list of mail addresses of people you don't know at the top of the e-mail. Because of aforementioned fact, you will have 2 e-mail addresses in the headers of your mail. The sender and the recipient. But every recipient will only see their own e-mail address, foregoing the list.
Hence, all the other people can't see your e-mail address either if you're one of the recipients. Hence, no stranger you have no idea what they'll do with your e-mail address can't reach you by e-mail. Nor can they sell your e-mail address to spammers Nor can viruses that infect inboxes (from aforementioned strangers who might not take to security as you do) harvest your mail address.
Just imagine, a friend of yours sends something to a list of people, say 10, and your mail address is in the headers. 9 of these people (ofcourse, you're smarter than that) forward it each to 10 more people. This means that, provided no double friends receive it, your e-mail address is now known to 90 people. And there's no telling how smart the friends of those friends are. Or if they have good virus-scanners. Or if they even know that the free iPod thing is just a scam to harvest mail adresses. Or if they're quite stupid and don't (want to) see that an e-mail address can be abused.
In other words: Treat your mail address as you would your phone number!
[/MODE]
And for those nimwits who will read this, let's set up a nice checklist of things to do when you have a computer and you want to keep using it for a while (not having it infected by viruses/hacked and turned into a zombie/destroyed/slowed down/etc etc).
1) If you must use windows, have a firewall and viruschecker installed. Use Netscape Navigator, Opera, or Firefox if you want to avoid several big bugs in Internet Explorer.
2) Check for viruses each month, or even biweekly. (Running a complete system check will take several hours. You can have it run at night).
3) Keep Windows and your Viruschecker updated. Also check for updates on your firewall every now and then.
4) Do not open attachments, ever.
5) Do not ever, ever ever forward e-mails, it will make you harder to spam.
6) Never reply to spam. This will show spammers your e-mail address works. It is more likely to double the amount of spam you get.
7) Treat e-mail adresses like phonenumbers: they're private!
8) Give your friends this list.
9) obey these rules!.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-04-13 02:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-13 09:02 pm (UTC)Other annoying sources of spam are mailing lists and bugzilla addresses...
no subject
Date: 2005-04-13 09:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-14 01:31 am (UTC)Yes, I sometimes forward messages to people who I think might be intrested in it.
Even funmails with funny googled/copied/pasted pictures in it I sometimes forward. Very rarely, and only to people who I think are really intrested in it. And not a lot of the people I know are. I know you aren't. So don't worry, I won't forward any funmails to you.
And yes, I have replied to spam on several occasions. I learned later that this is just what spammers want; me confirming that my email adress is active.
About attachments: I do receive mails with word documents attached, and sometiumes they do contain important information for me. I once received a mail with a word document with a fantasy illustration job offer from someone I didn't know.
I replied that I was intrested in illustrating work, but that I have a policy not to open attachments sent by people I do not know. Would they be so kind to send the mail again with the job offer as plain text in the mail? I knew that if they were serious, they would not mind the little effort, and if they were not serious, then it would show easily enough.
Turned out they were serious, and they didn't mind sending the email again without attatchment.
My worst sin so far: I still use Microsoft Internet Explorer, and plan to keep on using it. I tried some others, but didn't like them. Either they don't communicate with my firewall, or they don't display webpages like I want them displayed.
So far, MS IE has proved to be the best product for me, and therefore I will keep using it.
Yes, I am a sinner. Kill me if you must.
LOL!
Date: 2005-04-14 09:21 am (UTC)*big hug*