Here are three simple, yet important, email hygiene habits that you might consider to protect yourself and to avoid inconveniencing others.
Examine links in an email before you click them
Emails often contain links which you can click to go to a website, fill out a form, etc. It’s dangerous to click the link without knowing where it will send you. Sometimes the link simply says “click here” and sometimes it looks like an actual URL. There are two ways to examine the link before you click. One is to hover over it, and look at the lower left corner of your browser for the actual URL. It may be small and hard to read. A better way is to right-click the link and select “copy link address”, then paste the link into Notepad or another text editor, to examine it at your leisure.
If you are not satisfied that the link goes to where it claims to go, then don’t click the link.
Use Bcc to keep recipients hidden
Have you ever received an email sent to a large group, where you can see the names and email addresses of everyone who received it? You or others might not appreciate your identity and address being made public to the whole group. There is an easy way to avoid committing this faux pas yourself.
Your email client will prevent you from sending an email if it is not addressed to anyone, but both the To: and the Cc: fields can be blank as long as there is a recipient in the Bcc: field.
To avoid making the long list of names and addresses visible to all recipients, just put the list into the Bcc: field. Everyone will receive their copy of the mail with just themselves in the Bcc: field and no information about other recipients.
Unintentionally unsubscribing someone from an email list
This email, like others sent by a bulk mailer like Mailchimp (which is used by ICUUW) , has a “Forward to a friend” button, which allows you to forward an email safely. I recommend you always use that instead of simply forwarding an email to a friend. Why?
If you look at an email sent to you by an email list, at the bottom you should always (by law) find an “unsubscribe from this list” link. You might think that a friend could be interested in the event, so you forward it. When you do that, you also forward the unsubscribe link.
Your friend might think, “I don’t want to get any more emails from this organization”, so they click the unsubscribe link. What happens then is that the ORIGINAL RECIPIENT of the email (YOU) might be unsubscribed from the list, without notification, and you will miss subsequent mailings from that list.
To avoid this trap, it is prudent to DELETE the Unsubscribe link before forwarding the original email. Simply highlight the Unsubscribe link and delete it before sending the mail.
If you have any personal email and browsing hygiene tips you would like to share, please send them to the Communications Committee, for sharing in future articles,