Oh how I love my morning ritual! Waking to the spring bird’s sunrise serenade and padding over to Old Faithful, turning her on and assuming ‘the position’ in front of her inviting screen. Content, with coffee in hand I am eager and ready to greet my new day, and all it holds. After traveling through the news portals like a passenger in the cargo hold of a World War II fighter plane, I return to the sanity of my welcoming e-mail.

Thankfully, most of my messages feel like a breath of fresh air after filtering through the choking fumes that escaped from the smoldering world news. But then there’s yet another reality check. The dreaded daily duty of opening up my [SPAM] folder to rifle through the dead mail in search of the few casualties that have been clipped by my [SPAM] land mines. Followed by an even more unarming task…. The capture of the now increasing number of infiltrators who have managed to permeate my Inbox!

By this time my beloved caffeine has made its way through my circulatory system and I am reluctantly armed for the task at hand. Of late, it has become warfare for my eyes. Picking through the imposters when the line count is 400-700 is not light duty at the crack of dawn. I will have to redraw my parameters and lay out a new defense.

One of my new tactics will be following the sound advice I received from a diligent soldier against [SPAM]. He instructed me in a tactical maneuver I had not yet heard of. By following a few easy steps I could keep [SPAM] from my hallowed Inbox.. “Don’t forward ‘Forwarded’ e-mail” he said. Alarmed, but not quite ready to call out the National Guard, I continued listening. I learned that there are militias of mercenary servers out there in the trenches of cyberspace just waiting to capture my e-mail address and feed it to the SpamBots of the world.

He went on to say that if I wanted to keep my e-mail address as a "TOP SECRET:For Your Eyes Only" address I needed to stop forwarding those address laden modern day bits of affection to the addressees in my contact folder. And to tell my friends and family to follow this simple rule when sending out and replying to those often laughter inducing forwarded morsels of love.

He explained, when sending a message the “To:” address line should always reflect my own email address. Then type the recipient’s e-mail address in the “BCC:” area of the address line. This small change in how we send our messages to each other has a huge impact on starving the ever increasing number of fat SpamBots who have been feasting on our succulent e-mail addresses.

He went on to say, if I find it necessary to forward the plethora of ‘forwarded’ e-mail I receive, the best way to do so is as follows. Copy the text/images of what I want to launch off into cyberspace into a new e-mail message. Then send the message following the BCC: method noted above. By forwarding (and sending) all mail using that small tactic, I will become one more soldier doing my part to keep [SPAM] where it belongs.. In the can!

Copyright © 2008 Kathleen Grover