Email Forwarding Tips

With the ever-growing threat of cyber-attacks, SPAM, and Phishing emails, here are 5 tips to follow to ensure you don’t accidentally jeopardize your recipients’ systems.

• Never blindly forward an email from an unknown source. If it looks suspicious, have your IT Department or IT Provider scan the email with an antivirus software. Many of the default antivirus programs that are included in AOL, Google, Hotmail, or Yahoo email services just aren’t effective in protecting systems against today’s threats.
• Don’t copy (CC) or blind copy (BCC) recipients who don’t need the information you are forwarding. There may be information included in the email not everyone should see or needs access to.
• Don’t include sensitive or potentially embarrassing information. Remember, your emails are not private. You should never send confidential, proprietary, sensitive, personal. or classified information through email.
• Be careful when forwarding Attachments. Attachments are the number one tool used by hackers for virus attacks.  Always scan your attachments with antivirus software. Be aware of the size of attachments, never send anything larger than 1 or 2 megabytes. If the recipient is a fellow employee, save the attachment to the network and provide them with the location of the file rather than forwarding it. This save email server space and network bandwidth.
• Avoid forwarding chain emails. Typically, only a small portion of a chain email contains relevant information, the rest is just noise. If you find that it is necessary to forward a chain email, protect the privacy of those in the email by deleting their email and contact information. Also, delete any and all information that isn’t relevant to the conversation.  Recipients shouldn’t have to scroll through an email for more than a few seconds to find the information they are looking for.