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The Evil Power of
To:
An attempt to educate the masses
by Bryce L. Tomlinson
I'm writing
this because it desperately needs to be said. It's not because I
choose to be hurtful or bitter toward anyone. I've had to send
similar emails to people before, and it's always seemed to cause
needless problems, and in fact, some individuals almost never email me
anymore. And that is sad.
I really love hearing from my family and friends, and I appreciate that they think of me often enough to send me things.
...but...
EVERYONE needs to learn about the Evil Power of To:.
This is a gripping attempt to teach people why they get SPAM, and why all of their friends get SPAM, as well as how these disturbing "e" mailing lists are amassed.
If you must send something that you are sending to a multitude of people, PLEASE put all of those people's email addresses (especially MINE) on the "BCC:" (blind carbon copy) line of that email INSTEAD of the "TO:" line. I have a very legit reason for requesting this...
Programs are being used by HUGE corporations now, which monitor email addresses of all kinds of people, and they "harvest" email addresses from the messages they receive. i.e. you send a message to Bob, Sally, John, and Sarah. Sarah sends the message to Mary, Joe, Kerry, and Max. It just so happens that Kerry works for Office Max, and Sarah only has her work email "kerry@officemax.net" and it just so happens that Office Max has a contract with a company which sends out random Office Max offers to people through mass emailings. This company has been authorized to use a program which "harvests" addresses from everyone's email on officemax.net, and since Kerry gets the message at work, this contractor now has the addresses of Bob, Sally, John, Sarah, Mary, Joe and Max, not to mention Kerry, and of course, YOU. So the next thing you know this company sends out Office Max offers to Sarah, Mary, Joe, Max, Bob, Sally John, and you. Then they sell all those addresses to other similar mass mailing companies, possibly including ones about breakfast cereals, home security systems, auto insurance, and maybe even a farm animal or two.
The point is, there is not one person who is immune to spam. The only ways to prevent it are to (A) delete it instead of forwarding it, (B) only sending it to one person at a time (thusly eliminating the possibility that someone might harvest OTHER addresses from a single email), and (C) using the BCC: line instead of the TO: line... one easy way to do this is to put your OWN email address on the TO: line (thusly sending it only to yourself--but wait!) and then putting all the other email addresses on the BCC: line. This way everyone's addresses stay private, the way they should. Even then though, it seems someone inevitably gets you once in a while.
By putting my email address on the TO: line of a message you send to lots of people, you give them, and many others, access to my personal address, which is much the same as giving them my phone number, at least as far as I'm concerned. How many times have you opened up a forwarded message from someone and literally had to sift through 5 or more pages of other people's addresses before you actually got to the content of the message? Believe me, ALL of those addresses have been harvested by these mass mailing companies.
Please don't take this wrong.... Like I said, I love to hear from my family and friends, and I like a joke or an interesting headline about as much as anyone else. But at the expense of exposing my email to everyone on the net, I have to object. At least one of my email accounts is virtually unusable because of spam, and I'd hate to have to abandon any other addresses just because people choose not to educate themselves about the Evil Power of To:.
-Bryce
I really love hearing from my family and friends, and I appreciate that they think of me often enough to send me things.
...but...
EVERYONE needs to learn about the Evil Power of To:.
This is a gripping attempt to teach people why they get SPAM, and why all of their friends get SPAM, as well as how these disturbing "e" mailing lists are amassed.
If you must send something that you are sending to a multitude of people, PLEASE put all of those people's email addresses (especially MINE) on the "BCC:" (blind carbon copy) line of that email INSTEAD of the "TO:" line. I have a very legit reason for requesting this...
Programs are being used by HUGE corporations now, which monitor email addresses of all kinds of people, and they "harvest" email addresses from the messages they receive. i.e. you send a message to Bob, Sally, John, and Sarah. Sarah sends the message to Mary, Joe, Kerry, and Max. It just so happens that Kerry works for Office Max, and Sarah only has her work email "kerry@officemax.net" and it just so happens that Office Max has a contract with a company which sends out random Office Max offers to people through mass emailings. This company has been authorized to use a program which "harvests" addresses from everyone's email on officemax.net, and since Kerry gets the message at work, this contractor now has the addresses of Bob, Sally, John, Sarah, Mary, Joe and Max, not to mention Kerry, and of course, YOU. So the next thing you know this company sends out Office Max offers to Sarah, Mary, Joe, Max, Bob, Sally John, and you. Then they sell all those addresses to other similar mass mailing companies, possibly including ones about breakfast cereals, home security systems, auto insurance, and maybe even a farm animal or two.
The point is, there is not one person who is immune to spam. The only ways to prevent it are to (A) delete it instead of forwarding it, (B) only sending it to one person at a time (thusly eliminating the possibility that someone might harvest OTHER addresses from a single email), and (C) using the BCC: line instead of the TO: line... one easy way to do this is to put your OWN email address on the TO: line (thusly sending it only to yourself--but wait!) and then putting all the other email addresses on the BCC: line. This way everyone's addresses stay private, the way they should. Even then though, it seems someone inevitably gets you once in a while.
By putting my email address on the TO: line of a message you send to lots of people, you give them, and many others, access to my personal address, which is much the same as giving them my phone number, at least as far as I'm concerned. How many times have you opened up a forwarded message from someone and literally had to sift through 5 or more pages of other people's addresses before you actually got to the content of the message? Believe me, ALL of those addresses have been harvested by these mass mailing companies.
Please don't take this wrong.... Like I said, I love to hear from my family and friends, and I like a joke or an interesting headline about as much as anyone else. But at the expense of exposing my email to everyone on the net, I have to object. At least one of my email accounts is virtually unusable because of spam, and I'd hate to have to abandon any other addresses just because people choose not to educate themselves about the Evil Power of To:.
-Bryce