How to Forward an Email Politely and Safely

We all receive lots of good email that we want to share, jokes, recipes, cartoons, family letters. There are as many reasons for forwarding as there are people to forward to. Before you forward, you need to be aware that there are people out there stealing email addresses. There is a brisk market in guaranteed live email addresses, for spammers, phishers and shady marketers. It's important to protect your friends and associates from spam and phishing, and one way to do that is to follow proper forwarding etiquette.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• A computer with an internet connection
• An email client

1. Find the button that says "Forward" and click on it.
2. Edit the email to remove any forwarded email addresses and unnecessary text from the message. This is important for a lot of reasons. (See Tips below.)
3. Look under the "To" box for a button or words that say "Bcc" and click on it.
4. A new address box will open. Enter your forwarding addresses in that box.
5. Go back to the "To" box and enter your own email address.
6. Click "Send." This will send the email to you again, and it will send it invisibly to your friends. Delete your own new email and smile because you just did it the polite way!

Tips & Warnings

• This is the safe and polite way to forward an email. Your friends won't notice, but they will receive less spam in their mailboxes.
• Editing the body of the email to remove unnecessary material makes the email smaller, therefore easier to send, easier to receive, and easier to read. And, your friends won't be complaining, wondering why the message is repeated four times in the email, along with the addresses of a bunch of people they've never heard of.
• An email client is the program you use to send and receive your email, Eudora, Outlook Express, Yahoo Mail, GMail, Pegasus, there are lots of them. All have pretty much the same features.
• This really is considered the best way to forward email, so spread the word!