Things To Think About When Using Email

First don't give out your email address unless you need to. At one company that I worked for there was a user that had gone through a dramatic weight loss. She had signed up for just about every weight loss web site on the net. Our spam servers blocked thousands of junk emails just for her daily. Most of these emails were from different weight loss companies. If you have to give out your email address to get information from a web site, use a web mail account such as Yahoo or MSN. Let Yahoo or MSN worry about your spam not your company's mail server(s).

If you don't know who sent you that email....don't click on any links, download any attachments or reply to the email. Spammers will look for email addresses that have responded. Once you respond you have just told the spammers....."This is a good email address. Feel free to pass it on." Sometimes the link that you are clicking on doesn't go to what is says it goes to. Just last week there was an email that went out world-wide that looked like it came from Microsoft. The link actually said that it was going to update.microsoft.com when it was really going to a web site in Romania. Once at this web site it would try to install a little program on your PC that logged all your key strokes and forwarded that information to a server in Romania. These people actually got many user accounts with passwords.

Keep your inbox clean. What I normally do is create folders for the people and companies that I do business with. When I clean up my email it is easy. I sort by sender and just move all the email from that person or company to their folder. Later when I'm trying to find an email from a company or person all I need to do is look in their folder.

Keep it professional. Try to break subjects into different paragraphs and don't forget to spell check. When sending an email don't forget that you have no control over where that email may end up. If you wouldn't want your mom to see it then don't send it. I can't tell you how many times someone forwarded me a message that has inappropriate material. I then look at the trail and see that the person that the message originated from has their contact signature at the bottom.

Protect your co worker's and friend's contact information. If you are going to forward that inappropriate joke to all your contacts use BCC (blind carbon copy). This way when that inappropriate email ends up in Sister Theresa's inbox it's just you that she praying for.

Have a great day!!

KC