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You're never really anonymousUnless you're an absolute master of the universe when it comes to email, security, and hacking; and you have a complete understanding of the ins and outs of the Internet and the Web; you should never assume that you're operating anonymously. Don't download naughty pictures, post a message of dubious truth on a stock bulletin board, or send an anonymous letter to your boss and assume that nobody can figure out who sent it. Trust me, there are ways. Even hackers get caught, although not all of them. If so, the prisons would be full of a bunch of zeeps who can't grow full beards, don't eat enough vegetables, and have very bad fashion sense. But some do get caught because, unless they're VERY good, they leave a trail. Unless YOU are very good, don't assume that anything you do via email, the Internet or the Web can't come back to haunt you. Email complaints I recently read a forum posting about an attempt to organize an email letter writing campaign. I posted a few messages on why this is probably a futile endeavor. This is a summary of those posts. Don't bother. Email is not a good way to do coordinated protests. The ones I've read about have either been filtered into the virtual trash can or have just ticked off the wrong people. IT managers and network administrators are the ones who usually have to deal with these situations, and they get mad at the source of their frustration - the complainers - instead of forwarding the emails to the appropriate destination. In fact, they probably don't even know what to do with the messages, and are too busy dealing with the overload to care. Organized email complaints are relegated to the same category as spam and treated as such. A better approach is the tried and true method. Find out the CEO's name and write him or her a letter. For a hundred years, executives have been getting complaint letters and they've built systems to handle them - complaint departments, secretaries, form responses, etc. These letters almost always get read by an administrative assistant and routed to the correct department for action. Sometimes, if the letter isn't written in crayon, it may even find its way into the CEO's in-basket. With email, all the secretaries have to do, once they notice a lot coming in, is set up a filter to delete the messages. They won't even notice them after a while. At least with paper letters, the wastebaskets fill up. A piece of paper exists someplace that is a little more difficult to ignore. In addition, there is simply a little more respect for a letter because the writer had to put some effort into it. They had to write or print it, stick it in an envelope, put a stamp on it and walk it to the mailbox. Just like copying and mailing a form complaint letter will have little impact, so will email. What's the effort involved? There is virtually none. And the people you're writing to know it and afford the email messages the appropriate amount of respect - none. There are some costs and labor associated with incoming paper complaint letters. Somebody has to open them, read them, sort them, bag them and even physically haul them to the trash bin. There's virtually no cost to dealing with incoming email complaints. Executives are more likely to respect something that actually costs them something to deal with. Who's reading your correspondents' email? Lately, frequent topics of discussion are email usage policies and how employees should realize that they have very little online privacy. This should be something to consider, even if you have a personal email account that you access from home. The reason is that if you send an email to someone at their business email account, their employer has the right to read it, even if YOU wrote it. So if you're sending someone a message along the lines of "So, how's the job hunt going" or "about last night...let's try it this way next time...", don't assume that they're the only ones who are going to read it. You may provide either entertainment or blackmail opportunities to the IT person assigned to scan email. Another thing to consider is that once you've sent that steamy letter to your girlfriend, what's to prevent her from forwarding it to her best friend, who forwards it to her best friend, who forwards it to your mother? A good rule of thumb with email is to assume that it is NOT private. Even if you use the latest technology to encrypt the message, you never know what's going to happen to it once it's decoded. So the best advice is only to send stuff via email that you'd want posted on the bulletin board at the office. If it's really private, pick up the phone and get together for lunch. After you sweep the restaurant for bugs, of course. What's their connection speed? Another thing to consider when you're sending email to someone is how fast THEY connect to the Internet. While your company's connection may be blazingly fast, your mom in Poughkeepsie may be connecting at less than 28,000 BPS. So don't send her that 4 megabyte picture of your new birdbath until you get her that new high-speed DSL line for Christmas. Why do we hate spam? As many long-time readers know, I don't have a problem with spam. In fact, I kind of like spam. However, what annoys me is probably the same thing that really bugs most people. It's the tricky subject line. For example, I get a LOT of messages about losing weight fast. I don't really know why, but I do. But if they say it in the subject line, I can easily and quickly delete those messages. Because I certainly don't need any help losing weight. However, when I get an email that says, "Hi from an old friend from school," and it turns out to be an ad for a search engine submission tool, I get a little ticked. So here's a message for all of you who might be planning an email marketing campaign...be honest with your subject line. After all, why are you doing selling a product that can only be sold by tricking people into reading about it?
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