How do I prevent spam after my friends sending me forwards and chain letters?

Chilly Willy

New Email
I now use good Ol' GGGGGGGGGG GMail :)yay:) . Which I now use for all my correspondence and with strict notices to all my Contacts to Never again, send me any mass forwardings! I once had a very nice Outlook account which had been ultimately destroyed by well-intentioned family, friends, foes, clients etc... by sending me countless numbers of the aforementioned with a resultant outcome of appx two or three hundred Spams/Phishes/trashmails/etc..every single day so that I can't even take advantage of my slick MSFT Office Pro software bundle I'd purchased for some ungodly, inflated, bloated price, in the four or five hundred dollars range for that beautiful set of three DVD's with those unique holograms and all important Product Keys we had to type and re-type in after my darling chilluns would blow our system requiring a reinstall which of course I'd get scolded for trying to load a key that was already being used by some other weasel (me of course, but I didn't know how to properly re-reload it etc...
 

EQ Admin

EQ Forum Admin
Staff member
Re: How do I change the default font and color in an email?

GMail :)yay:) . Which I now use for all my correspondance and with strict notices to all my Contacts to Never again, send me any mass forwardings! I once had a very nice Outlook account which had been ultimately destroyed by well-intentioned family, friends, foes, clients etc...

I understand your frustration on this point. I do not like receiving a lot of chain mail and forwards. I don't send them, and I think that helps keep people from wanting to send them back at my accounts. If people tell my they want to forward me junk mails I'll usually tell them one of my alternate accounts such as my Yahoo account. I do my best to keep my Gmail account clean. Gmail has great spam filtering too. To help prevent spam have you tried teaching your friends and family to use BCC when forwarding chain mails? For example, here is how to use BCC in Gmail :

http://www.emailquestions.com/gmail/1205-hide-recipients-email-using-bcc-gmail.html
 

THERESA

Customer Service
I gave out my private email that I only give out rarely and got an email this morning listing 45 other people's email addresses along with their real names and mine. :eek: I am very upset about this. It was a business email. I know the person that did it didn't realize what they were doing when they did it. (BCC everyone and put themselves on the "TO" line" I really like this person and if it were ANY other business that did this to me, I would have ripped them a new one. I know they didn't realize what they were doing at the time, but that doesn't help the fact that there are 46 people's email addresses and real names "out there". Many people wouldn't give something like this a second thought or even notice that it was a mass public email. Since Ray owns this site, I am fully aware of the problems this can cause. All it takes is one lady that sells Avon or Mary Kay to use every email she ever got to pimp her business. She then turns around and sells her contact list in exchange for more contacts from someone else and your email is in the hands of literally THOUSANDS of people within days!!! :(



I have also had problems with family not respecting my email address and forwarding chain emails. You all already know how Ray and I feel about those. They're nothing but trouble!
 
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EQ Admin

EQ Forum Admin
Staff member
Recommend MailChimp to the small business for sending their newsletters.

It's a great service that provides free templates and is free to use for small mailing lists.
 

THERESA

Customer Service
There is nothing more frustrating than your email getting overrun and filled with spam.

You really should avoid "forward" emails for starters. It only takes ONE person on any one person's email list to leak your email address into the wrong hands. When you send forwarded emails, have you ever noticed how many email addresses are included on them? If you get 10 people that send it to everyone in their address book and they have 15 contacts, that is 150 addresses leaked out right there. I have received forwards that easily have over 500 email addresses in them. If ONE person that receives that email wants to, they can distribute your email address and everyone else listed in that email to anyone they choose.

I started a brand new fresh email account because of spam and ask that I not get forwarded emails. Then when I realized nobody would listen about sending them, I asked that they send me a "clean" copy. I asked if they must forward it, to please only send it to me separate from everyone else so that I could keep my email address private. I kept getting the unclean version so I dumped the account. Now I only have email for business and not for pleasure. The spam is that irritating to me. It was both family and friends that would not adhere to my wishes and kept sending "dirty emails" By dirty, I mean emails that included several other email addresses (along with mine) and was sent out to the masses with no regard for privacy.

Keep your email private and if you continue to get forwarded emails, you can put them on your blocked list but it won't stop them from still including YOUR email address to one that will end up in the hands of potentially hundreds of people if not thousands if it is circulated heavily enough. Your email is private. It is YOURS it is not for someone to breech your privacy and leak it to others. When a business does this, it is uncalled for. It is HIGHLY unprofessional to send out an email that shows everyone's email address. I do not do business with people like that. It's wrong! If they are in business, they should BCC clients and put themselves on the "to" line.

Start a brand new account and don't give it to anyone that doesn't respect your right to privacy. You can always tell people they have to send you private messages on forums or social media instead of email. They can't forward emails to your message box here.
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I just checked my email that I dumped last year. There were over 3000 emails in it and 99% were spam. There was one from someone I know. I decided to see what it was. It was a forwarded email with over 135 (I lost count) email addresses on it. A lot of the emails had first and last names listed along with the email address. (in case you were wondering when someone sends you spam and calls you by your first name when your name isn't in the email address itself.) A lot of them even had actual links to click on to email any of the people that I wanted to myself. That should save spammers a lot of time.

My best advice to avoid it is to not allow anyone to have your email address that refuses to respect your right to privacy. Your email address is yours and should not be abused by people you know and allowed to get into the hands of thousands of people that you don't know and spammers. It is a snowball effect. I finally have a clean one and refuse to give it out. I have had to get rid of too many and start over because nobody would listen about not forwarding emails to me. If someone sent one forwarded email to me or one with several email addresses on it, they were marked as spam. It may sound harsh but if you knew how many people refused to listen about something so simple, you would understand the frustration.
 
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