Reply All

“Reply All” should be outlawed. The “Reply All” button is invariably used for emails that contain absolutely no information that I need or want, such as “Please remove me from this email list,” or “I don’t know how I got on this list, but please remove me!” ARGH!!Of course, “Reply All” would be unnecessary if certain people would discontinue the practice of putting everyone’s email in the “To:” line. Find the “BCC:” line, people!My stepmother is a great example. I apologize if you are reading this Barbara (yes, that’s her name, too). First, she sends me (and, apparently, everyone else she has ever met) emails such as the one warning me that Barak Obama is a Muslim and is secretly out to destroy the United States. Of course, being the responsible purveyor of information that I am, I check out the outlandish claim at snopes.com, then send her a reply saying the email she has just sent is irresponsible and foolish, and I attach a link to the snopes.com Web site.Of course, I hit “Reply All.”Barbara Lanz-MateoPublisherCoastal Woman

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 at 4:20 pm and is filed under Publisher Speaks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Reply All”

  1. Free Woman Says:
    March 20, 2008 at 10:10 pm

    Thanks for creating this blog so that local women can voice their thoughts. How do I leave a community post?

    By the way. I agree. Let’s outlaw “Reply All.”

  2. Barbara Lanz-Mateo Says:
    March 21, 2008 at 1:58 am

    Just send me your post to editor@coastalwoman.com. I’ll get it posted! That’s all there is to it!

    Barbara

  3. Brenda Richter, CPA Says:
    April 11, 2008 at 9:46 pm

    Thank you for reminding people about the BCC option.

    For more on the dangers of not using BCC:
    A couple of years ago I was at a technology seminar for CPAs. The instructor was going over the basics of sending email, and told the story of a medical clinic that almost got in some serious trouble when it sent out a group email to all of the HIV patients using “TO” instead of “BCC”.

    In this era of privacy concerns and identity theft, we should all be careful with the way we send out email to multiple recipients.

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