How to forward email appropriately and stop viruses & junk mail

Do you wonder why you get viruses or junk mail?  Don't you hate it?

Every time you forward an email there is information left over from the people who got the message before you, namely their email addresses & names.  As the messages get forwarded along, the list of addresses builds, and builds, and builds, and all it takes is for some unsuspecting person to get a virus, and his or her computer can send that virus to every email address that has come across his computer.

How do you stop it?  Well, there are several easy steps:

1. When you forward an email, DELETE all of the other addresses that appear in the body of the message (at the top).  Highlight them and delete them, backspace them, cut them, whatever it is you know how to do.  It only takes a second.  You MUST click the "Forward" button first and then you will have full editing capabilities against the body and headers of the message.  If you don't click on "Forward" first, you won't be able to edit the message at all. 
2. Whenever you send an email to more than one person, do NOT us the To: or Cc: fields for adding email addresses.  Always use the BCC: (blind carbon copy) field for listing the email address.  This way the people you send to will only see their own email address.  If you don't see your BCC: option click on where it says To: and your address list will appear.  Highlight the address and choose BCC: and that's it, it is that easy.  When you send to BCC: your message will automatically say "Undisclosed Recipients" in the "To:" field of the people who receive it.
3. Remove any FW: in the subject line.  You can rename the subject if you wish or even fix spelling.
4. ALWAYS hit your Forward button from the actual email you are reading.  Ever get those emails that you have to open 10 pages to read the one page with the information on it?  By forwarding from the actual page you wish someone to view, you stop them from having to open many emails just to see what you sent.
5. Have you ever gotten an email that is a petition?  It states a position and asks you to add your name and address and to forward it to 10 or 15 people or your entire address book.  The email can be forwarded on and on and can collect thousands of names and email addresses.  A FACT:  The completed petition is actually worth a couple of bucks to a professional spammer because of the wealth of valid names and email addresses contained therein.  If you want to support the petition, send it as your own personal letter to the intended recipient.  Your position may carry more weight as a personal letter than a laundry list of names and email addresses on a petition.  (Actually, if you think about it, who is supposed to send the petition in to whatever cause it supports?  And don't believe the ones that say the email is being traced, it just ain't so!)
6. And who can forget the ones that say something like, "send this email to 10 people and you'll see something great run across your screen."  Or, sometimes they will just tease you by saying something really cute will happen.  IT AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN!  I don't let the bad luck ones scare me either, they get trashed.
7. Before you forward an Amber Alert, or a Virus Alert, or some other ones floating around nowadays, check them out before you forward them.  Most of them are junk mail that has been circling the net for YEARS!  Just about everything you receive in an email that is in question can be check out at Snopes.  Just go to http://www.snopes.com/  It is really easy to find out if it is real or not.
8.  So please in the future, let's stop junk mail and the viruses.