Wednesday, February 02, 2011

Stopping the FWD Scourge (PSA)

Please do not forward chain letters, urban legends, potentially offensive jokes, videos or photos without first considering the following:

1. Mass forwards pass ever increasing lists of addresses along with the email that may end up on someones system, that is infected with viruses, that may potentially harvest those email addresses for malicious intent.

2. Your email address along with those attached may end up on a spam list. Making it difficult for recipients to receive legitimate emails from you.

3. You may be spreading false information or hoaxes.

4. Or worse.. spreading viruses, trojans and malware.

Please refrain from mass forwarding not only for the sake of your recipients but to help the overall security of email and the web as a whole.

If you find something that you want to pass on and you genuinely think the recipient will enjoy it then forward it to that person only (not in an email blast to all your friends and family) and include a personal note about why you enjoyed it and why you think they will too.

IF you do feel a mass emailing is appropriate please use Blind Carbon Copy(BCC). So as not to pass on a massive list of addresses to potentially insecure systems. Also before forwarding either edit out any attached email addresses or use a tool like emailSTRIPPER. You may also want to do a little research to see if the story your passing along is factual or not via Snopes.com, TruthOrFiction.com and good ole Google.  
To all the thoughtless or naive uncontrollable forwarders out there, if you get asked by someone to not forward future emails, kindly respect their request. Don’t get hurt feelings and certainly don’t act like you have a right to disregard someone’s legitimate desire to not get emails they have no interest in receiving.
Know that those who make these requests still want to hear from you — they just don’t have the time or their email volume is such that extraneous forwards about silly, political or humorous topics that they are not interested in are what they no longer want to receive. This includes those chain emails no matter how noble the cause may seem — it’s probably hooey
Also there are much better tools and sites to be sharing the humor that is the web ie: Digg, Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Reddit etc....

Resources to aid in stopping the FWD scourge:
StopFowarding.com - Politely and anonymously ask them to stop forwarding you junk email.
NetManners.com - Common courtesy, social graces and socially acceptable behavior on the web.
 


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