by Marianne Van der Wel
Email is a great way to stay in touch with family, friends and colleagues -- especially those who don’t live close by. Email is also a great asset for making organizations such as MURA more effective. As with all tools, however, there are a few things to keep in mind when using email:
Email is not Private
Please do not assume that email is private, ever! System managers have legitimate access to all information on the computers they manage, through which your email passes and on which your email resides. Did you know that when a message is returned as undeliverable, a copy is often automatically sent to the system manager? Did you know that your email can pass through many host computers on the web before it reaches its destination?
It's also possible that you might send email to an incorrect but similar address. I have personally received email intended for others and, yes, I have unintentionally sent email to the wrong person.
Finally there are those unscrupulous people who intentionally try to “crack” other people’s internet traffic including emails.
Watch Your “P's and Q's”
Since your email is never 100% private and because it’s the nice thing to do:
Use capitals sparingly. The use of capitals implies SHOUTING and is often interpreted as anger. Also a message in all capitals is difficult to read. If you have trouble changing case, send your message in all lower case letters.
Choose your words carefully. If you are feeling angry or upset and wish to express that in an email, send it to yourself first. That way, if you hit the send key prematurely, you send your worst first draft to yourself. After reading the message you sent yourself you may wish to reword it, being just as emphatic but more polite. There’s an old saying: “Honey catches more bees than vinegar”.
Do not share email addresses without permission. When sending email to several people or a large group, do not assume that everyone on your list wants to share their email address with others on your list. To prevent people from seeing each other’s email addresses, use Blind Carbon Copy (Bcc).
Do not always use “Reply All”. When replying to an email message, ask yourself if everyone on the list wants to see the response or if it’s useful to them. If the answer is no, reply only to the sender.
When replying, consider removing some of the previous conversations. When replying repeatedly to a message, it can be a good idea to remove some of the earlier text if it no longer adds to the conversation. Long older messages below the current conversation are often difficult to read, particularly for small mobile devices.
Subject Line
Use your subject line to indicate what the message is about. If you need a reply by a certain date, also indicate that in the subject line. Many people get a large number of emails. Glancing at the subjects of incoming emails helps them decide what to read first. If searching at a later date to find an email, a subject line that has little to do with the message content does not help. When you are responding to a message and you change the subject of the original message or add another topic, alter the subject line to indicate the change or addition(s). Do not leave the subject line blank as that is of no help.
Scams and Phishing
Though the use of email is mostly positive in my experience, scoundrel and criminal activity does exist. I recently received an email from a friend saying she was stranded in England, had been robbed, and was desperate for financial assistance. I knew my friend was not in England but right here in Hamilton and ignored the email. Someone had cracked her Facebook account and from there got into her Gmail account and used it to send phoney pleas for cash. (My friend has since changed her Facebook and Gmail accounts and is using separate passwords for both accounts, which we recommend.) Cases like these are rare but do happen. While some email systems do a better job of protecting you from scams and phishing than others, the only guaranteed protection is to be ever vigilant.
