You may be unknowingly contributing to the spam email problem

When you send an email message to more than one person, if you do not address the recipients as Blind Carbon Copy (BCC), you may be contributing to the spam email problem.

A common way spam and viruses are spread is via email. If you send a message to multiple email addresses without using Blind Carbon Copy, all the email recipients’ addresses are visible to all other recipients – and to any virus or spambot that may be on any of the recipients’ computers. Many viruses and spambots gather e-mail addresses from infected computers to redistribute viruses and spam.

Letting email addresses be visible to others is also a privacy concern – there may be people in your address book that don’t want their email address spread around for others to see.

You may be unknowingly spreading false information

Many urban legends are spread via email – often in the form of chain letters that urge you to forward the message to everyone that you know. Useful websites that help separate factual from fictional email chain letters are Snopes.com, TruthOrFiction.com and Hoax-Slayer.com.

Interestingly, I’ve received emails with a subject “Advice from Snopes.com” – but Snopes denies that it’s something they’ve distributed. Even if the email says that the information was verified on Snopes.com, do yourself and your email recipients a favor by investigating it on Snopes first.