Forwarding E-mail messages

We've all received e-mails that have been forwarded multiple times and contain a long list of e-mail addresses. Unfortunately, unscrupulous people including hackers and spammers can harvest these addresses.

To prevent this from occurring when you forward e-mails, follow the steps below to use the Bcc (Blind Carbon Copy) feature. This allows you to send messages to many recipients without displaying their addresses and compromising their privacy.

Forwarding E-mail Messages With Bcc

1. With the selected e-mail open, click on the "Forward" button on the toolbar.

2. If the "Bcc" field is not visible, select "View" from the menu bar and then select "All Headers" from the resulting drop-down menu. The "Bcc" field will now be visible below the "Cc" field.

3. Click on the "Bcc" button and a list of all saved recipient e-mail addresses will appear. You can choose from this list or you can manually enter the e-mail addresses of your chosen recipients.

4. As a courtesy to others, highlight and then delete the "From" and "To" addresses within the body of the e-mail so spammers don't harvest these addresses. Plus, its annoying to have to scroll down pages and pages of addresses looking for the e-mail itself.

5. It is a good idea to enter your personal e-mail address in the "To" field as often times spam filters will catch messages that do not have an address in the "To" field.

6. Click the "Send" button on the toolbar.