An Email Security Tip
This is an extended explanation of how emails with viruses and worms are birthed.
In case you are too lazy to read the rest of this important item, the gist of the message is
Your friend might get the idea that you sent him a message with some kind of virus in it. This is one of those instances that resulted from someone sending you an email message with dozens of people CCed - but not using the BCC (Blind Carbon/Complimentary Copy) option.
When a message is sent with everyones email address visible (they DIDNT use the BCC method), then any one of those visible addresses can be used by someone who eventually gets a copy of the message. It could be that they deliberately use it - or it could be that it was used automatically, unknowingly.
For example, Bob sends a message to 40 friends; one of those friends is Al. Al forwards the message (all the addresses are still visible) to 40 friends; one of those is Jane. Jane sends the message to 40 of her friends (all of those 40 addresses are visible, plus the first 40 that came from Al). One of Janes 40 friends is Steve. Steve reads and keeps the message. Later (even years later), Steve gets a virus and the virus is designed to send a copy of itself to every address in every e-mail message that Steve still has on his computer. The virus sees a message with the 120 addresses (Bobs 40 addresses, followed by Als 40 addresses and, finally, Janes 40 addresses all of those addresses are visible).
The virus picks one address out of the first 40 addresses (the ones from Bob). It then creates a message with a copy of itself and fakes the From: part of the new message with the address that it picked (this is easy to do). It then sends the message to the other 39 addresses. Then, it does the same thing with the other two groups of 40 addresses The viruss advantages for doing this are: (1) the address that it picked and used when faking the From: part of the message is most likely in the other 39 peoples address books. Anti-spam programs will allow it through because that address is a known good guy (its in their owners address book). (2) all of the addresses in each group are probably good addresses.
This, of course, is why we should all be using the BCC option when we send messages to several family members (simultaneously) and/or other larger email groups - the addresses wont be visible and can’t be used by anybody else. The other thing that we should all be doing in addition to using the BCC method of addressing messages is:before forwarding a message, delete all of the other addresses in the message (the ones that are visible because other people didn’t use the BCC method) so that only the basic message is left. That way, we are cutting the line and no one after us will ever be affected because of our actions (or lack thereof).
Some people say this about deleting all of the visible addresses: That will take too much time or Thats a lot of work. In that case, the polite thing to do that shows great manners is to NOT forward the message, no matter how wonderful the content might seem.