Ins and Outs of E-mail?

Check to see if the site will send your e-mail address to others. If they do - you can expect junk e-mail to arrive! Most reputable sites inform you that they do not send your e-mail address to others

Check to see if any payment is required in order to subscribe

Check that you know how to unsubscribe to a newsletter you no longer want.

Replying to E-mail

This is usually quite straightforward if you receive an e-mail from an individual, but can be more involved if you are replying to (potentially) a group of people. You may have noticed in your e-mail program that there are 2 areas where addresses can be placed - the To section and the CC (Copy Correspondence). There is a difference!

To Section Addressees - Will be used in a reply and denotes the main participant(s) in an e-mail. CC Section Addressees - Will receive a copy from the author but not from those who reply (unless the replier specifically states that they should). Be very careful when replying to newsletter mail as it is possible to send a reply to every single subscriber! When this happens, subscribers can get very irate as this is known as spamming (see next section)

Spamming

This is a term that means someone has sent an e-mail to hundreds or thousands of people on the Internet. This is frowned upon for a number of reasons:

It is a waste of time for most recipients

It is a waste of computer resources - which affects everyone on the net if large amounts of junk e-mails are being sent.

It costs YOU money to download the e-mail from your ISP!

Usually, spamming can be avoided by just checking what you are doing before sending an e-mail. I was the recipient of some strange spams a few months ago. I didn't understand what the e-mails were about at first, and I wondered just who these people were. It turned out to be an innocent mistake for which the editor of the newsletter had to send out an apology and told us what had happened.

Play the game! Most newsletters are written by people who genuinely want to help you and for you to have fun on the Internet. So please, be careful when you reply - make sure you are only replying to one person and not thousands!

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