Email Etiquette
The Executive Committee of the Stanford-le-Hope and District u3a offer the following safety advice to members when using email to communicate with other members.
- COMPOSING AN EMAIL
The Executive Committee recommends that when sending an email to a number of members, the email addresses are added using the 'Bcc' NOT the 'CC' facility.
This is usually an option you can select in the same area where you normally put others addresses.
Bcc stands for Blind Carbon Copy and all receivers of this email will have no indication of other recipient's of the posting. Using this facility, large numbers of email addresses are no longer visible at the top of an email and helps with security.
- WHEN REPLYING TO AN EMAIL
Would all members using email to respond to group and other members communications, please refrain from using the "REPLY To ALL" option in the email programme. Please use the REPLY button. That way you just reply to the original sender and not to everyone in the original email. Or if you wish to reply to more than the sender please select the individual recipients you wish to communicate with and not send to the whole group of general addresses.
You can FORWARD on an email if it has an attachment and it will only go to a nominated recipient you select.
Members need to be aware and think about what they include in an email which is addressed to a large number of others. For example it is not advisable to publicise the fact that you will be away on particular dates or give your address or other identifying details.
The reason for being careful about this is not the trustworthiness of our members but the possibility that email accounts could be hacked and the information relayed to others and used by people you don’t know. The more people you email about any matter the greater the chance it will go to an account that might be hacked.
When replying to an email it is good practice to delete all other emails attached to your reply. This will prevent the circulation of large numbers of emails around the group.
- EMAIL ADDRESS SECURITY
To help you reduce the chances of outside people using our members’ email address lists for non-u3a purposes please consider the following:
- Try not to use an old email when sending a reply. (In other words composing a brand new email to use as the reply.)
- Also when sending out emails to a lot of members you could use the Bcc facility as detailed above.
Members give the u3a, and one another, their email addresses on 'trust' so we need to respect that and all try to avoid outsiders obtaining them without the permission of the individual concerned.
If you want to publicise information from another organisation that you belong to please check with the relevant Interest Group leader before you email our members.
Following this advice should prevent all us receiving even more spam mail in our inboxes.
Thank you.