For years I have been telling people why I don't open forwarded mail, or 'chain letter emails'. Recently I took one of these chain letters and extracted the email addresses that it contained.
This chain letter was less than a week old when I got it and in that week it had been circulated to 169+ people. Many probably forwarded it to everyone in their address book which means it was circulated to many more people during that week. If I can extract 169 names and addresses from a week-old chain letter imagine what a professional 'spammer' can do. In other words, besides the possibility of spreading and/or receiving viruses in these chain letters you also put your email address and the address of everyone in your address book in the hands of these spammers who have special 'scrubber' programs that intercept internet emails containing large "To" and "cc:" listings.
Spammers know that if they appeal to our heart, our paranoia, and our fears we will pass these emails along and they can then intercept the growing mailing list.
So what do we do? If you receive something forwarded to you it is my suggestion that you don't open it, don't forward it and you tell everyone on your mailing list to do the same, but if you want to pass something along then:
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create a new message
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copy the text of what you want to pass along, not the addresses or "To" and "From" info.
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paste it into the new message
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put your address in the "To" field
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put everyone else's address in the 'bcc' field, not the 'cc' field.
This way the only address you share with your mailing list and the world is yours, the 'bcc' field hides everyone else's address.
I suggest you do the above even when sending original messages to you email list.
GlennDL
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