Marie, email them. Ask them to take you off their mass mailing list. Tell them, you can no longer handle all that comes in. Tell them if you continue to get forwarded stuff you will block their address, cause you REALLY need off their list.

Then, next time something forwarded comes in, block them.

This is what I had to do to several people.

Funny thing is, I let them email me again now. They haven't "misbehaved" since. :)

Moni

Good luck! LOL I had several people that did the same thing.I got a worm in my old computer from one of them and it never worked the same again.I e-mailed them more than once,did no good.Finally just blocked them.Hated to do it but if someone sent me an e-mail requesting that I not send forwarded stuff,I would have the courtesy to stop! So I guess they weren't very good friends after all.

We have one person who forwards soooooo much stuff! We have it set up so anything from him goes directly into our deleted box rather than the Inbox. We can just delete them all at once and not even read them.

I had the same problem last year. My computer got so full of viruses, spyware, and adware that I had to get a new one. Luckily the new computer came with an email program that has a virus blocker. I've also installed AVG, and so far I've had no problems in the ten months I've had the computer.

To prevent problems on my new computer, I sent this message to nearly everyone in my email address book:

Dear friends in my email address book:
As many of you already know, I've been having problems with my computer that I can't figure out, so I've decided to just get a whole new computer. To avoid infecting my new computer, I will no longer be accepting bulk email messages or forwarded messages at this address. In other words, I will only open messages that are addressed just to me, not to a list of many people. All other messages will be deleted automatically. This should prevent viruses that come through email and should also reduce the number of spam messages I get.

If you'd like to send me a joke, link to a web site, funny photograph, or similar content (no religious or political material, petitions, or chain letters please), please send it to (another email address I use). I check my email at that address at least every couple days.

And please also follow these guidelines in all the email you send, to protect both yourself and your friends from viruses and spam:

(1) When you forward email, DELETE all of the other addresses that appear in the body of the message. That's right, DELETE them. 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 use the To: or Cc: fields for adding email addresses. Always use the BCC: (blind carbon copy) field for listing the email addresses. This way the people you send to will see only 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's 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) 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.

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This helped quite a bit, but there was still one doofus who kept sending me forwarded messages (never anything useful). I had to block her, and eventually she stopped sending me mail.

You can also get a new email address (through hotmail or gmail or yahoo) that you just check online and don't download messages to your computer's hard drive.

And get a good virus blocker! AVG works well and is free.

You know, I wish I knew how to do this stuff. I still don't know how to 'hide' all the e-mail addresses when I want to send something on to a lot of people, and have only the 1 persons address show up, blocking the addresses from the others I've sent it to as well.
Say I've forwarded the same joke or whatever to 12 people. How do I get it to only show 1 address?
I'm totally ignorant here. And I've been told more than once. But reading it and doing it are two different things. I guess I need someone to show me. Just once. I'll get it then.
Leslie

WOW, uxorial that is the BEST message I have seen so far. I actually copied it to my computer for future usage, and then I saw, I already have it from when you must have posted it before. Still GREAT, and to the point.

Thank you so much for taking the time to post this again.

Moni

Grammahony, all you have to do to keep ALL email addresses from being seen by everyone else is use the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) line when you are sending an e-mail out. You don't have to have even one address in the TO or CC lines.

Moni, thanks! That's why I posted it--so others could copy it and use it. Make sure you change the part where I give my other email address!

Buzzard thank you. Do you or anyone else use AOL? Does that matter? Moni and I tried over the phone, and they still came up on her end.
Leslie

adding my THANKS for a well written letter...i love getting emails...but I don't really get a thrill of scrolling thru pages and pages of headers...it's not that hard to learn how to erase them Grammahony...just like Uxorial said...put the email in forward or reply mode...then you can edit the body of the email just like you would in a word processing program...left click with your mouse to highlight text...then tap your delete key...voila!! The unwanted text is gone!! or if you can't get that...just tap the delete key over unwanted text...it takes longer but does the same thing!

I know how to get rid of unwanted text and pages of headers. I want to know how to send the same e-mail to a group of people without every address I send it to showing on everybody elses e-mail.
Like if I send one to Moni, Hey Jude, Sandy-in-Iowa, Patti, etc. I want to maintain all their privacy, and not have their e-mail addy showing from say Monis showing up on Sandy's or Patti's.
Leslie

Correct me if I am wrong, but I was of the understanding that when using [BCC] that there still MUST be one addy in the [TO] address field. I always use my own addy and have a copy sent to myself so that I know it went out and did not get lost in cyberspace rather than relying on my [SENT] folder.

Does it depend on one's email program? Or have I been adding an addy in the [TO] field unnecessarily?

I send BCC all the time with a blank TO line. I use OE. Never had a problem.

I send BCC all the time with a blank TO line. I use OE. Never had a problem.

i use OE too..but it wont let me send without somebody's address in the "To" line..so I always just use my own!

Grammahony...sorry I misunderstood you..(lame brain here didn't read it right)...just use the BCC line in your email...if your using AOL and can't find it..try searchin under the help section for how to send BCC's..

I does not work for me without something in the [TO] field.

I am woefully computer ignorant so I'm not even going to try to figure it out and toggle any settings or anything.

If anyone with AOL could contact Leslie/grammahony and let her know how to do this... that would be GREAT. I tried, but all mail programs work a bit different, and I just don't know AOL.

Bud, just put your own address in the "to" line, and all other addresses in the BCC line. :)

Moni

Oklamoni, THAT is the way I've been doing it all along as I had previously said.

Buzzard said (three times) that you can leave the [TO] field blank and it will still work.

It don't.

I set up a person in my address book called Undisclosed Recipients using my own email address. That way if I'm sending something to multiple people and don't want them to see everyone else's email address, the TO line on the email reads 'Undisclosed Recipients' and I enter each of their names on the BCC line.