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Email Basics

     - Tuesday, December 30, 2003

Regardless of how you check your email, there are a few basics you should know:

New or Create or Compose: Write a new email. Type the email address or select it from your address book.
Reply: Send an email back to the person who sent you the original message. Attachments are not sent.
Reply All: Send an email back to everyone the original email went to. Attachments are not sent.
Forward: Send the email to someone else. Type the email address. Attachments will be sent with the email when forwarded.

So if you just received an email from your sister with a pretty picture of your neice attached, and you want to send the picture to your mom, just use the Forward button.

Try to hold back when forwarding email about things you wouldn't talk about at dinner, such as chain letters, political or religeous emails, or every joke you've ever received. If you forward email to a bunch of people, put your own address in the TO line and everyone else's address in the BCC line. Spammers collect forwarded joke emails and strip out all the addresses they find.

Also, try not to click on links in emails. Every time you do, the website owner get a report with your email address. This verifies the address is active and they can sell it for big money to a spammer. This goes double for those Unsubscribe links at the end of junk mail. Just delete it and move on with life.

Don't open email that looks suspicious. Never click on attachments in emails you don't recongnize. Get a anti-virus program that checks your email.

posted by Kevin Watts |  Permalink |