1. Sean

   There’s privacy issues too that should have been considered. Perhaps somebody in her e-mail chain would have liked to not have their e-mail available to somebody else in that chain. So she’s really not in a place to complain given that she put all her friends/contacts in that e-mail if somebody wants to pull a prank and reply all and say something funny about that e-mail. I have more than one friend that would do what you did, and I would probably find it funny if it was to an e-mail I sent.

   Nov 19th, 2008

2. Rachael

   If she was that picky she should have used bcc, me personally I wouldn’t reply to everyone on a message if I didn’t know them, but I don’t think she can complain if she didn’t hide their addresses from you.

   Nov 20th, 2008

3. jim

   sounds like she deserved it for forwarding a stupid pointless email. on the otherhand, brian, replying to all like you did can come back to haunt you. it wasn’t but a couple months ago that a mass email went out to our office (of about 500 workers), and someone replied to all saying “please take me off this mailing list.” others responded with “Me too”s, and soon several other people were replying to all saying “Stop replying to all.” actually, i think i just work with a bunch of idiots.

   Nov 20th, 2008

4. Brian

   Fun feedback! Here, twitter and facebook all pretty much had the same general consensus…

   Nov 20th, 2008

5. Brian

   Brian,

   I’ve had similar issues with mass e-mails in the past. Might I suggest the website (stopforwarding.us). It’s a website that sends a polite and annoymous email to the offender asking them to stop.

   Hope to see you and Scott back on the “air” soon.

   Brian.

   Nov 24th, 2008

6. J Richardson

   She’s in the wrong…PERIOD! I hate that stuff too and wish other folks would use a little etiquette before they forward on that kind of junk. As if we don’t already have enough nonsensical stuff to waste our time with! No regrets…you did the right thing Brian!

   Dec 11th, 2008

7. kasey

   She’s in the wrong. Maybe you don’t want YOUR address sent to all those people either. She created a group with her email and your reply to the whole group was OK.

   Dec 13th, 2008

8. Brian

   Thanks all! I didn’t think I was in the wrong!

   Maybe it’s time for another “Video Mighty Minute”. This one seemed to garner a lot of interest.

   Dec 14th, 2008

9. Vic

   Dear Brian:

   Thanks for raising this topic. It has been a pet peeve of mine since getting on the Internet in 1995. Please excuse the caps in the following but I think they are needed to get across how SERIOUS this issue is.

   First off, she is VERY much in the wrong. There are the issues of privacy that others mentioned but more importantly, by doing what she did, she is POISONING the email accounts of everyone on the list and leaving them open to VIRUS INFECTION, possible FRAUD, IDENTITY THEFT and to enormous amounts of SPAM.

   Most of the SPAM one gets comes from inconsiderate foolish people who act in this reckless way.

   There are virus infections that harvest every email address in the address book and in any email messages stored on a computer. Once harvested these addresses are secretly sent to SPAMMERS and CRIMINALS hoping to steal your money.

   If even ONE person who received her email is not properly protected with a high quality up to date antivirus program and has such an infection, everyone listed will have their email address compromised, collected, sold and added to a list used by mass mail SPAMMERS.

   Not only that, such infections, often forward one or more documents from each machine infected to each email address it gathers and those documents also are infected so the process continues harvesting more email addresses and forwarding all addresses it collects.

   By gathering real documents from each machine and sending them to the machine owner’s friends and associates, the virus has a greater chance of spreading because people are more likely to open these messages and getting the infection.

   To make things worse, often these infections contain key logging software that monitor every keystroke made on a PC with the goal of stealing passwords, confidential information, access to banking information and eventually your money.

   Criminals are using these methods to steal, millions if not billions of dollars every year.

   All that being said, she is guilty of of creating a very dangerous situation.

   Likewise, you are guilty of not carefully realizing the situation and making it worse by replying to all.

   Just suppose, some people know that she forwards garbage like this and never open her emails but they trust you and were infected because they trust you.

   If you simply must send a message to many people, I suggest that you send it to yourself and BCC it to everyone else.

   Always do all your operating system’s security updates and have a good up to date virus scanner and always use it.

   Also think and look before you click. Opening that attachment or forwarding a message to too many people can cause a lot of grief.

   To best protect against the dangers of the Internet, teach the people in the chairs to THINK.

   Great topic.

   Dec 17th, 2008

10. flash game

    She’s really not in a place to complain given that she put all her friends/contacts in that e-mail if somebody wants to pull a prank and reply all and say something funny about that email.

    Mar 20th, 2009

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