If you can't fight spam, at least don't feed the spammers

Today I received an email about a "deadly computer virus around" from one of my friends. Of course I was not the only recipient on that email; the email actually asked the person receiving it to pass the news on. Unfortunately what I hoped that wouldn't happen, just did. My valuable spam-free Gmail address was included in a viral email spreading around the globe. Well, I thought it might be a good idea to start a viral email myself, but this time to educate people how to handle a viral email! I thought it might be a good idea to put it here so you can read my email too.

Hello,

I'm sending you this email because you just received an email about a deadly virus from my good friend Ali. I hope this email gets to your mailbox before you actually send out that warning email to everyone in your address book.

In internet security one of the rules of thumb is "DO NOT FORWARD ANY EMAIL TO EVERYONE IN YOUR ADDRESS BOOK" no matter what the email is. Wondering where the spammers can find your email address? They initiate a chain letter by sending out an email about something that sounds important, funny, or simply stupid and ask you to forward this email to as many people as you can. And you know what, many of us actually do it and when trying to forward, we usually put everybody in the TO section of the email rather than the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy). This way we have permanently exposed out friends' email address to anyone who receives this email. Just look at how many addresses are on the previous email. Well, you might not be interested but there are MANY people out there who would love to sit down and extract all these addresses from these viral emails and sell them on the internet as a package to the spammers!

Believe me, if it's a deadly virus spreading and the person specifically asks you to forward this email to everyone, 99.99 percent of the time there is no deadly virus involved; the email itself is acting like a deadly virus by collecting all this information and spreading exponentially. No matter what you see in an email, if it's foreseeing your fortune, if AOL is paying a poor family with an ill daughter, if it's a spiritual message, or if it's a good joke, remember to be skeptical when the email actually asks you to send it to everyone. And even if you think something is important for others to know (I doubt it), ALWAYS PUT THEIR EMAIL ADDRESSES IN THE BCC FIELD NOT THE TO FIELD!

You can practice this by sending out this email to everyone that you have forwarded Ali's email to. Remember to put everyone's names in the BCC field to protect their identity and email address. Hopefully we can educate more people and stop these chain letters that collect our valuable information, and fight spammers.

-Bahram