Hands up if you have received an e-mail message that starts with a pageful of peoples' addresses.
That is a surefire way to open your addressees to spam. So what if you need to send out an e-mail to 50 people?
Instead of putting e-mail addressees in the TO box, place them all in the BCC box (or blind carbon copy).
Addresses in the BCC box will not appear in any recipient's e-mail messages.
Put your own e-mail address in the TO box. Some company e-mail systems bounce back e-mail messages without at least one recipient in the TO box.
The second tip is to create groups you send e-mail to regularly .
To do that in Outlook Express, go to Tools in the menu bar and select Address Book. Then go to File and choose New Group.
Give the group a name, say, 'Pasta Lovers'. Within the same window, use the Select Members button to add existing addresses to your group.
If you are using Gmail, go to the menu bar on the left side and choose Contact.
Click the New Group button - that's the icon of two persons with a '+' sign on the left. Name the group, again say, 'Pasta Lovers'.
Check all the contacts whom you want to add to the group. Then find the Groups button - the same icon but without the '+' sign. Click it, drag the cursor down to 'Pasta Lovers' and click that.
Now use Pasta Lovers whenever you want to e-mail this group.
This story was first published in The Straits Times Digital Life on 12 November 2008.
