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Re: [LUG] Email security

 

On 20/04/10 17:23, NW wrote:
Simon Williams wrote:
2. By any chance is she getting chain emails from people who are too
dumb to trim headers and use BCC?

No, I don't think so. But how would I know?


It's usually joke e-mails, virus 'warning' e-mails or e-mails with cute pictures that someone will send to say 20 or so people in their address book (sometimes more, sometimes less) and the recepient will simply hit the forward button and send it on to 20 or so of their friends, rinse and repeat.

Then one of your wife's friends could get the e-mail after it's been forwarded on about 20 times, and it'll be pages long with lots of e-mail addresses contained in it where folks have simply forwarded on and not removed all the list of e-mail addresses before sending on.

I generally send a stroppy e-mail back to friends I know who do this with my e-mail address or just give them my hotmail address.

If you try forwarding this e-mail on you'll see what I mean, for example this is what appeared in your message which I clicked the forward button (I've replaced the e-mail addresses with X's)...

Subject: Re: [LUG] Email security
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2010 17:23:06 +0100
From: NW <xxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: <xxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <xxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

You'll find e-mails with multiple lines like this, often referencing tens or hundreds of e-mail addresses.

If these people simply put the recipients in the bcc box then no one else will get everyone else's e-mail address (still not an ideal solution if the recipient forwards it on blindly though).

Oh and it's not just friends who do this, I had the same from one of my suppliers who e-mailed me and a whole load of other customers of theirs and put the addresses in the To: box.

You'll find another example of it on The Register...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/20/ecrm_people/

Rob


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