Viruses and Malware

• The first danger most people think of when it comes to email is viruses. A computer virus is a special kind of program, usually hidden within an attachment, that copies itself onto your computer somewhere in order to gain some measure of control over your computer or access to data stored on it, particularly your address book, in order to find new hosts. Even if you do not open an attachment, simply forwarding an email that contains an attachment could infect those to whom you forward it. Those who write viruses and other malware usually want it spread to as many computers as possible, and group emails are a convenient way to do that. If you receive a group email with an attachment and you aren't sure where it came from and why, it's safest just to delete it without forwarding.
  
  

Confidentiality and Decorum

• It's a natural human trait: people love to gossip. Email is a terribly convenient way to share gossip with your coworkers, or to tell them about the fabulous time you had on the weekend. But you can never know just who else might eventually receive a copy of that email, and embarrassment or worse could be the result. The best way to avoid this is not to put anything in a group email you wouldn't be willing to let the whole world see. And it's always a good idea to assume that an email sent to you was sent in confidence and wasn't intended to be shared with anyone else.
  
  

Phishing

• Phishing is a way to seek out personal information, usually for the purposes of identity theft. The most common phishing scams (such as faked emails pretending to be from your bank asking you to confirm your banking information) usually do not involve group emails as such, at least not directly, but carelessly forwarded group emails can provide scammers with a wealth of information to help them with future phishing attempts. When you forward a group email, every person on the list of recipients receives a copy of it which includes the email addresses and often the names of every other recipient. What's more, you don't know to whom the other recipients might then forward the message, intentionally or not. A scammer could send an email to one person on the list, pretending to be another person on the list.
  
  

Consideration of Others

• One thing that many email users do not realize, especially when they first start out, is that many group emails have been circulating on the Internet for a long time, and longtime users have probably seen them before and are tired of seeing them. It can be disturbing to receive a message that threatens bad luck if you don't send it on, but breaking the chain really doesn't bring bad luck. In fact, you're more likely to suffer negative consequences if you DO forward it.