Forwarding interesting or funny e-mails is nothing new. Since the dawn of this great medium, people have been reading something humorous, touching or bizarre and have sent it off to their list of friends. However, when the e-mail addresses contain your company’s name, it associates it with the content of the message.

Recently I received an adult-themed joke/picture in my e-mail box from someone I know. After opening it, it contained all the forwarded addresses up until it was sent to me, filled with “>” and certain comments attached. After taking out all of the Yahoo or Hotmail addresses, as well as ISP’s, I came up with a list of 47 companies that were listed within the body of the e-mail. The majority of them were large, multi-national corporations where perception of their brand is very important. There was a trail of who sent it out to whom, along with some nicknames people had given each other (i.e. Rob “The Tongue” from a large pharmaceutical corporation and Greg “Who’s Your Daddy” from a prominent food manufacturer).

Not only does this put your company in the wrong light and potentially harm your image, it also gives the chance for a spammer to harvest the addresses and sell them. That one e-mail had over 200 e-mail addresses I could have sold.

How do you stop this from happening? Other than enforcing a business use only e-mail policy, you can urge employees to use the “BCC” (Blind Carbon Copy) function when sending e-mails to multiple addresses. That way, each recipient only sees their own name and, if forwarded, will not contain a distribution list. However, what if it’s not a joke or an interest piece? What if it has to do with confidential information, such as your company’s client list?

Recently a friend of mine received an e-mail from a large newspaper, inquiring about his company, a large insurance firm, placing an ad in an upcoming feature. The e-mail was sent out to multiple clients and everyone’s address was in the “To:” line for all to see. Not only do you run into the issue of a spammer using these, but also since this was a group of clients, how much do you think it would be worth to this newspaper’s competitor? The direct e-mail to the buyer of ad space at large corporations. It can reflect an image of your company that you don’t hold your clients in a high regard.

Once you’ve mastered the art of Blind Copying (BCC) people on e-mails, you also have to look at the validity of the messages you send. The forwarding of hoaxes, both about mythical viruses and amazing wealth are rampant in any e-mail system. Recently, a virus warning I received from numerous sources, pleaded with me to search my hard drive for a file entitled “sulfnbk.exe”. This is part of the message:

“A VIRUS could be in your computer files now, dormant but will become active on June 1. Try not to USE your Computer on June 1st. FOLLOW DIRECTIONS BELOW TO CHECK IF YOU HAVE IT AND TO REMOVE IT NOW. No Virus software can detect it. It will become active on June 1. It might be too late by then. It wipes out all files and folders on the hard drive. This virus travels through E-mail and migrates to the 'C:\windows\command' folder. To find it and get rid of it off of your computer, do the following..."

Needless to say, I searched for the evil file, and sure enough, I HAD IT! So I highlighted the file and was ready to select delete, when I thought I would check it out first. I dropped by Snopes.com and looked it up. It was a hoax.