It happened again today and it drives me crazy. You know, when you get one of those “forwarded” emails. And up there in the “TO” field is my preciously guarded personal email address along with about 50 others, all exposed for me and all the world to see. This is very bad email etiquette.

All I have to do is hit “reply all” or cut and paste and I have access to all the addresses on this person’s email list. The bad news is that this is all anyone else on the list has to do to capture mine. It is one of the reasons that I am being inundated with spam, even on the email addresses I guard the most closely.

To protect yourself, if you don’t already, you might want to consider setting up a freebie “throw-away” email address with yahoo, hotmail or something similar that you use exclusively in online forms and public places. That way it is not too much of a pain to change it when the spam gets to be too much.

But then, when I see my private address on one of these forwarded emails I get really mad. Please don’t do this! Folks won’t like it. Especially if you are sending your massage client newsletter this way. There is a proper way to do it and protect everyone’s privacy.

The correct way is to send the email to yourself in the “TO” address, then BCC (blind carbon copy) it to your list. In Outlook you “right click” on the “CC” (carbon copy) button and chose “BCC”. Then you just put everyone’s address in the “BCC” field. Each email program is slightly different, but they will all have this feature (or get another one!)

This way the email still goes to everyone, but it protects the privacy of everyone concerned as each person only sees their own address in the “TO” field and not everyone else’s.

Your friends and clients will thank you for it.