The following guidelines were adapted from SAFE EMAILING PRACTICES published by PROBUS Canada and Email Safety Tips.
Your Email Accounts
- Change your password regularly and keep it in a safe place.
- Don’t share your password with anyone.
- Log out or sign off from your account when you’ve finished looking at or sending your emails.
- Make sure that you have antivirus software installed, and keep it up to date.
Sending and Receiving Emails
- Don’t open attachments from anyone you don’t know. Enter websites using your browser and not by clicking on a link provided in an email or through an online posting. Links are not always what they seem: by typing the address into the URL bar or into Google you will be sure of ending up on the correct page.
- Before sending an email, scroll down to the bottom and remove all the build up of Virus Protection Messages and other ads that get tacked on each time an email is forwarded.
- Keep your personal information personal. Don’t share bank or credit card information by email. Your bank will not discuss your private financial situation by email. If you receive any correspondence that claims to come from your bank, telephone your branch to verify it, and discuss the matter over the telephone instead.
- Whenever you send an email to many people, do not use the To: or Cc: fields for adding email addresses. Always use the Bcc: (blind carbon copy) field for listing the email addresses.
Why? This way the recipients will only see their own email address and not everyone else’s. Otherwise that list might potentially end up in the wrong hands. It also avoids the annoyance of receiving an email that begins with a huge list of addresses.
How? If you don’t see your Bcc option, click on the To: box and the Bcc option should appear.
- Don’t reply with your name and address to an email petition, and never comply with their request that you send it to several friends.
Why? The email can be forwarded on and on and can collect thousands of names and email addresses. Spammers purchase such petitions because of the multitude of valid names and email addresses.
Instead: If you want to support the petition, send your own personal letter to the intended recipient. Your position will carry more weight as a personal letter than a laundry list of names and email address on a petition.
- Delete and do not forward chain emails.
Email etiquette
When replying to an email, be careful about adding names to the To: Cc: or Bcc: lines. Remember that the original email sent just to you will now be visible at the bottom of your email. Sharing it may not have been the person’s intention.
Forwarding Emails
- When you forward an email, delete all of the other addresses that appear at the top of the message.
Why? Every time you forward an email, there are email addresses and names left over from the people who got the message before you. If anyone on the list gets a computer virus, his or her computer could send that virus to every email address. It is also possible the addresses could end up in the hands of a spammer.
How? You must click the ‘Forward’ button first and then you will have full editing capabilities. Highlight the previous addresses and delete them, backspace them, or cut them to delete them from your new email.
- Remove any ‘FW:’ in the subject line. You can leave the subject if you wish or change it.
- Always hit your Forward button from the actual email you are reading.
Why? Sometimes emails go back and forth several times and become a chain of messages. By forwarding from the actual email you wish someone to view, you stop them from having to see many emails just to read what you sent.
- Before you forward an Amber Alert or a Virus Alert, check them out.
Why? Most of them are junk mail.
How? Just about everything you receive in such an email can be checked out at Snopes at www.snopes.com. This is a well-known resource for validating and debunking urban legends, Internet rumors, email forwards, and other stories of unknown or questionable origin.
Phishing
Many unsafe emails are called phishing. Here is just one site that explains phishing.