Sending email messages seems pretty easy but all too often users put themselves and their personal contacts at risk from spammers. How? lets look at the issues;

Selecting recipients

TO: sends a message to the stated email address, all emails in this section are visible by the recipient

CC: stands for carbon copy and is the same as the above, the only reason for using it is to indicate the MAIN RECIPIENT(S) are shown and secondary people sent CC - all emails are visible.

BCC: stands for blind carbon copy - copy an email sent with TO and perhaps some CC email addresses to people so that the main recipients do no know who was sent BCC. This route is best for mass mailings of contacts from your address book.

Someone who receives an email sent TO and/or CC can click REPLY ALL and email all the others emailed regardless, this way spammers can pick up on a personal email with dozens perhaps hundreds of email addresses.

Remember a spammer need not be someone who sends millions of emails but anyone who sends promotional commercial email unsolicited, this could be someone sending hundreds of emails a day picked up from CC emails. Low volume spammers are often more difficult to detect, although they do send the SAME message, it is usually to a smaller more select set of emails, perhaps with some common theme or interest (pet owners, visitors to France etc)

Account Identities

If you use a computer based email client such as Outlook or Outlook Express you can create several different identifies with a single ISP account. You do this my creating a replica of your email account (with the same login details and password) but change the REPLY TO email address and Names to suit different needs.

Why do this? there are a host of reasons;

- You own or manage a number of web sites and want to reply from EACH by for example having an account for say XYZ.COM you can appear to reply from that domain and create a more professional image.

- You may want to mail friends and special contacts using your own REAL email or special reserved email account.

- Different people may use the same computer and email account - each can have its own email account.

Note: Most ISPs allow you to create a number of emails with a single user account or if you have a web site unlimited prefixes.

Maurice Clarke is founding owner of http://www.internet-online-privacy.com a free and independent source of information about all aspects of online fraud and personal privacy issues. The site contains articles and web links highlighting the leading privacy issues and suggested preventions and solutions for both personal and business web surfers.

Source: www.a1articles.com