Few communications tools give you as much exposure as e-mail. Unfortunately, mistakes in your e-mail will receive that same exposure as well. Depending on who sees your e-mail, your job, reputation, or career could suffer. Fortunately, avoiding these mistakes is easy. Here are five e-mail habits that annoy me (and maybe you as well) and what you can do differently.

#1: Vague or nonexistent subject line

Professor Woodward, who taught me contracts last year at Temple University Beasley School of Law, gave me one of the most useful pieces of advice I have ever received. “When arguing a case,” he often said, “make it easy for the judge to rule in your favor.”

Apply that same principle to e-mail. That is, make it easy for recipients to know what your message is about. If you’re like most people, you have an in-basket that summarizes your incoming messages, probably by date, sender, and subject. Don’t you love it when you can get the information you need simply from the subject line? The sender has made it easy for you and has saved you time.

On the other hand, how often have you received an e-mail without a subject or one that’s labeled, for example, “Phone number you requested.” Why couldn’t the sender have said, right in the subject line, “The phone number is xxx-xxx-xxxx”?

When sending an e-mail that concerns a particular person, give details in the subject line, along with the name. For example, if Joe Brown has been promoted, make your subject line “Joe Brown has been promoted.” Do not use only the name as the subject. If you send out an e-mail with just the subject “Joe Brown,” recipients may mistakenly believe that Mr. Brown has passed on.

In the event you do need to transmit such sad news, be explicit. For example, say “Joe Brown RIP” or “Passing of Joe Brown” or “Joe Brown [year of birth] – [year of death].”

#2: Changing the topic without changing the subject

Have you ever read an advertisement for an item that’s on sale, then gone to the store only to discover that that item is sold out? By law, the store has to give you a rain check, because of abuses in the past. In the old days, the store would simply try to sell you something else instead, a practice known as “bait and switch.”

E-mail users employ bait and switch all too often, usually out of laziness. For example, you send a note to a co-worker about subject 1. That co-worker later needs to send a note to you on subject 2. However, instead of creating a new note and labeling it “subject 2,” he or she simply replies to you, discusses subject 2, but keeps the subject line as “subject 1.” Annoying, isn’t it? When you send e-mail, make sure the subject line matches the actual subject. If you’re going to send a note via a reply, change the subject line to match the actual subject.

A few months ago, during a period of really cold weather, a neighbor sent an e-mail to all the residents of our development regarding a neighborhood telephone directory, and titled it “neighborhood directory.” A half hour later, I received a reply-to-all message from another neighbor with the subject “Re: neighborhood directory.” When I accidentally clicked on that message, I read that the sender’s heater had broken and that he was asking to borrow blankets and kerosene heaters. He did get what he needed and did later get his heater fixed. However, had he given his note a better subject heading, he might have had a faster response.

#3: Including multiple subjects in one note

Covering multiple topics in one note involves less sending and hence less e-mail traffic and volume. However, your recipient might overlook one or more of those topics. It’s better to keep to one topic per message.

#4: Sending before thinking

When you were small, your mother probably told you to count to three before responding to someone (mine told me to count to 10). Why did she say that? She knew that answering before thinking can lead to problems.

Make sure you really mean to say what you’ve written. People can interpret your words differently from what you meant. A statement made in jest to someone via e-mail may have a greater chance of being misinterpreted than one made in person. Also, be careful about reacting and replying too quickly to an e-mail that upsets you. As Proverbs 12:16 says, “A fool shows his annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult.”

I’ll talk more about it in a future article, but legal implications offer another reason to think before sending. E-mail can be subject to “discovery” by attorneys for a party that might be suing your employer. That is, the things you write in your e-mail could end up in the hands of those attorneys and could be used as evidence against your company in a trial. So before you send an e-mail, imagine that you’re on a witness stand having to explain it.

#5: Inadvertent replying to all

Before hitting Reply To All, make sure you really need to do so. Does everyone need to see your response? Does your response benefit everyone else? Or are you sending merely a private response or addressing a personal issue with the sender? In these situations, it’s better just to do a simple Reply. Otherwise, your private disagreement becomes public (and embarrassing) knowledge.

Be aware that if you receive a message because you’re part of certain message groups (e.g., a Yahoo group), your reply might go to everyone in the group even if you just hit Reply.

Do you recognize yourself in any of these mistakes? The good news is that once you recognize these issues, it’s easy to address them.

Note: This article and the previous one are available together as a single PDF download.

#1: Omitting the context of a reply

As long as it’s not overdone, including the text of the original message in your reply can help the original sender understand your response. If all you send back, however, is a “Yes” or “That’s right,” it may be difficult for the sender to understand your answer. For that reason, it’s best to indicate the context of your answer by including the original question.

#2: Shooting the messenger

Though the practice of shooting the messenger occurs more on message boards than in e-mail, it still deserves mention. Here’s what I mean by “shooting the messenger”:

–Receives the message

–Takes extreme exception to the quotation by person B

–In responding to A, attacks A rather than B

If you’re person C (the recipient), make sure you make the proper distinction when you reply. Just because A posted the comment by B doesn’t mean that A agrees with B. When you reply, address your comments to A. When talking about B, mention B explicitly and do so in the third (rather than the second) person.

Right:

To: A

From: C

Thanks for that note. Yes, I think B is really wrong on that statement.

Wrong:

To: A

From: C

What a ridiculous statement. It’s totally wrong.

#3: Misaddressed recipient

A woman and former classmate told me about an incident involving her law school days and then-boyfriend. During a summer job between two of her years in school, she met another young man. One day she wrote a letter to a girlfriend, talking about this new boyfriend. She also wrote a letter to her old boyfriend. You guessed it: A few days later, the girlfriend called and said, “You know, you sent me a letter addressed to Wayne [the old boyfriend].”

Be careful when addressing e-mail, particularly if your software has a “predictive fill-in” feature (as Outlook Express does). As you’re typing in a recipient name, the software will complete the entry for you. If it’s wrong, and you hit Send without noticing, you will have misaddressed your note. I have, in my address book, an entry for Joy Fellowship. It’s a church youth group with whom I have been involved as a leader and to which my daughters belong. I also have an entry for their piano teacher, Joy Kiszely. When I address a note to her, I have to be careful. Because of alphabetization, Joy Fellowship appears before Joy Kiszely does. I haven’t erred yet, but it’s a real possibility.

#4: Displaying addresses of recipients who are strangers to each other

Were you ever the recipient of an e-mail that had a gazillion other recipients as well? The message header, which had all of those recipient addresses, probably took up half your screen. Besides annoying you, the sender might have compromised your privacy by revealing your e-mail address to all the other recipients.

Don’t make the same mistake. If you’re POSITIVE that each of your recipients already knows (or could find out anyway) the address of every other recipient (e.g., they’re all in your company) and if the number of recipients is fairly small, go ahead and list them. Otherwise, address the note to yourself and put the recipient addresses in your blind carbon copy (bcc) field. Your recipients will not see who received your note, thus saving space and protecting the privacy of each recipient.

#5: Replying vs. forwarding

Didn’t you hate it when you were young and your parents talked about you to their friends while you were present? They’d cialis 20mg tablets refer to you in the third person, as if you weren’t even there.

I thought about that situation last week after talking to a prospective client with whom I had spoken a few months earlier. I sent him an e-mail with links to my TechRepublic articles and blogs. Later that day, I received a reply from him. However, when I opened it, here’s what I read:

John,

Despite his claim, I don’t remember talking with Calvin before. It may have happened but wasn’t memorable.

When you have time, could you read his article and let me know if it is worth doing anything else with it? Thanks.

Of course, the prospective client meant to forward my note to John (presumably a subordinate). Instead, he hit Reply, sending his note right back to me. Be careful that you don’t do the same thing. If you’re writing about person B but sending the note to person C, make sure you do forward (or send) your note to C and that you don’t inadvertently reply to B.

By the way, after getting this note, I replied back to the person asking whether the note had been meant for someone else and offering to figure out who “John” was and to send him the note directly. The person replied again, apologizing and admitting that he was poor at multi-tasking.

As you may recall, last week, Erin told you about the Mail Transfer Agent (MTA), so I thought I would take that one step further today and talk about IMAP. Here we go!

First of all, IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol. It's basically a method of accessing electronic mail or bulletin board messages that are kept on a mail server. In other words, it permits a "client" e-mail program to access remote message stores as if they were local. For example, e-mail stored on an IMAP server can be manipulated from a desktop computer at home, a work station at the office and a notebook computer while traveling, without the need to transfer messages or files back and forth between the computers.

IMAP's ability to access messages (both new and saved) from more than one computer has become extremely important as reliance on electronic messaging and use of multiple computers increases. But the functionality cannot be taken for granted.

The widely used Post Office Protocol (POP) works best when one has only a single computer. That's because it was designed to support "offline" message access, wherein messages are downloaded and then deleted from the mail server. That mode of access is not compatible with access from multiple computers, because it tends to sprinkle messages across all of the computers used for mail access. Thus, unless all of those machines share a common file system, the offline mode of access that POP where can i get propecia was designed to support effectively ties the user to one computer for message storage and manipulation.

I know that's a lot of information to take in, but hopefully you now understand IMAP just a little bit better!

So, tell me, do you often stop and sign up for different things while you're browsing the Internet? You know, maybe there's a contest you'd like to win or a newsletter you might be interested in. Well, if you do, you know you usually have to give out your e-mail address in order to complete the process. But what if you don't want to give your e-mail address out to that many different Web sites? Is there anything else you can do? Of course there is and that's exactly what we're going to talk about today. Let's check it out!

If you're always signing up for things online, I'm guessing you'd get some good use out of a temporary e-mail address. Am I right? Never even thought of that before? Didn't know those actually existed? Well, they do and they're actually very easy to get. There are several online services these days that can provide you with a temporary e-mail address when you need one. They're perfect for when you're registering original propecia for something and you only want to use the address once. It also helps cut down on any extra spam mail that may come through.

Like I said earlier, there are several online services that offer temporary e-mail addresses. Most of them work pretty much the same, but you'll just need to do some research and find the one that best suits your needs. A few of the top contenders are Mytrashmail, ExplodeMail, Mailinator, Temporaryinbox and Maileater. You can find any of those by searching for them on Google or whichever search engine you like to use. Once you find one that will work for you, just follow their directions and you'll have a new e-mail address in no time at all!

Do you use Yahoo!, Hotmail or AOL as your main e-mail program? If so, let me ask you this: have you ever switched over from Outlook Express to one of those because you thought it would be a better e-mail experience? If you answered yes, do you miss Outlook Express and all it had to offer? Okay, enough questions. If you said yes again, keep reading, because this is the tip for you!

If you would like to continue using your Yahoo!, Hotmail or AOL account, but prefer to use it with Outlook Express, there's good news, because you can do that! You can use both of the e-mail programs you're familiar with together to buy propecia 1mg create your own e-mail heaven. Here's how:

Yahoo!

The first thing you have to do is get your Web based Yahoo! account into a POP account so that Outlook Express can understand it. The best program for that is probably YPOPS. It's easy to use and you will be able to access all of your e-mail safely with it. You can download YPOPS here. Once you have it downloaded, get it up and running and then open Outlook Express. Go to Tools, Accounts, Add, Mail.

Now, type in the name you want to use and click Next. On the next screen, you'll want to enter your Yahoo! e-mail address and click Next again. Ensure that POP3 is selected under the section that says "My incoming server is a (blank) server" and enter in "localhost" under the part that says "Incoming mail (POP3, IMAP or HTTP) server." Type in the same thing ("localhost") where it says "Outgoing mail (SMTP) server" and then click Next.

On the following screen, type in your Yahoo! mail username under the "Account name" section. If you're not sure what your username is, it's just the beginning part of your e-mail address. Next, type in your Yahoo! mail password (whatever it may be). Click Next and then click Finish. Now, for the next part, highlight "localhost" in the Internet Accounts window and choose Properties. Then type "Yahoo! Mail" under Mail Account. That's it! Click OK and then click Close.

Your Yahoo! e-mail will then be brought in through Outlook Express and you can enjoy all the features. You can also go back to your YPOPS account and change some settings within that, such as your bulk mail folder, sent messages, deleted messages, etc. Just double click on the YPOPS icon and change whatever you want.

Hotmail

For your Hotmail account, you'll still need a POP program that OE can understand. For that, FreePOPs is recommended and you can download it here. Once that's done, go to the Start menu, All Programs and choose FreePOPs so that it will be open and ready. Next, open Outlook Express and go to Tools, Accounts, Add, Mail.

Next, type in the name you want to use and click Next. On the next screen, you'll want to enter your Hotmail e-mail address and click Next again. Ensure that POP3 is selected under the section that says "My incoming server is a (blank) server" and enter in "localhost" under the part that says "Incoming mail (POP3, IMAP or HTTP) server." For the "Outgoing mail (SMTP) server" section, type in your ISP's mail server. (That's usually the same server you have used before with any non-Hotmail account). Click Next when you're done.

Now, enter in your complete Hotmail e-mail address under the "Account name" area and type in your Hotmail password. Click Next and then click Finish. Now, go back and highlight the new Hotmail account you created under the Internet Accounts list and choose Properties. Go to the Advanced tab and enter "2000" into the "Server Port Numbers/Incoming mail (POP3)" section. Click OK and Close. You can now start receiving your Hotmail e-mail in Outlook Express and you can also go back to FreePOPs and change your settings to fit your preferences.

AOL

We have done a tip on using AOL in Outlook Express before and you can read the complete version here. But the basics are that AOL allows any e-mail client that has IMAP support to send and receive e-mail. Well, it just so happens that Outlook Express is one of those programs.

So, open Outlook Express and go to Tools, Accounts, Add, Mail. Type in your name and click Next. Now, enter in your AOL e-mail address and click Next again. For the "My incoming mail server is" section, choose IMAP and under the "Incoming mail (POP3, IMAP) server" area, type "imap.aol.com" (without the quotes). Now, in the "Outgoing mail (SMTP) server" box, type "smtp.aol.com."

Next, under the "Account name" area, enter in your AOL screenname, which will be the beginning part of your e-mail address. Then type in your AOL password and click Next and then Finish. Under the Internet Accounts window, highlight "imap.aol.com" and choose Properties. Go to the Advanced tab and enter "587" under "Server Port Numbers for Outgoing Mail (SMTP)."

Now, go on over to the IMAP tab and make sure the line that says "Store special folders on IMAP server" is unchecked. Click OK when you're done. Close that window out and choose Yes for the next option. That will then start the download of the AOL folders list into Outlook Express. Click OK when that's done and you're all set!

Keep in mind that your AOL e-mail will stay on the server, so you should go in and visit your regular AOL account every once in awhile, just to keep it cleared out. Other than that, you can go and enjoy your AOL e-mail while using Outlook Express.

There you have it. All the benefits of your favorite e-mail programs rolled into one!

WASHINGTON — A technical glitch gave the F.B.I. access to the e-mail buy viagra online without prescription messages from an entire computer network — perhaps hundreds of accounts or more — instead of simply the lone e-mail address that was approved by a secret intelligence court as part of a national security investigation, according to an internal report of the 2006 episode.

F.B.I. officials blamed an “apparent miscommunication” with the unnamed Internet provider, which mistakenly turned over all the e-mail from a small e-mail domain for which it served as host. The records were ultimately destroyed, officials said.

Bureau officials noticed a “surge” in the e-mail activity they were monitoring and realized that the provider had mistakenly set its filtering equipment to trap far more data than a judge had actually authorized.

The episode is an unusual example of what has become a regular if little-noticed occurrence, as American officials have expanded their technological tools: government officials, or the private companies they rely on for surveillance operations, sometimes foul up their instructions about what they can and cannot collect.

The problem has received no discussion as part of the fierce debate in Congress about whether to expand the government’s wiretapping authorities and give legal immunity to private telecommunications companies that have helped in those operations.

But an intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because surveillance operations are classified, said: “It’s inevitable that these things will happen. It’s not weekly, but it’s common.”

A report in 2006 by the Justice Department inspector general found more than 100 violations of federal wiretap law in the two prior years by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, many of them considered technical and inadvertent.

Bureau officials said they did not have updated public figures but were preparing them as part of a wider-ranging review by the inspector general into misuses of the bureau’s authority to use so-called national security letters in gathering phone records and financial documents in intelligence investigations.

In the warrantless wiretapping program approved by President Bush after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, technical errors led officials at the National Security Agency on some occasions to monitor communications entirely within the United States — in apparent violation of the program’s protocols — because communications problems made it difficult to tell initially whether the targets were in the country or not.

Past violations by the government have also included continuing a wiretap for days or weeks beyond what was authorized by a court, or seeking records beyond what were authorized. The 2006 case appears to be a particularly egregious example of what intelligence officials refer to as “overproduction” — in which a telecommunications provider gives the government more data than it was ordered to provide.

The problem of overproduction is particularly common, F.B.I. officials said. In testimony before Congress in March 2007 regarding abuses of national security letters, Valerie E. Caproni, the bureau’s general counsel, said that in one small sample, 10 out of 20 violations were a result of “third-party error,” in which a private company “provided the F.B.I. information we did not seek.”

The 2006 episode was disclosed as part of a new batch of internal documents that the F.B.I. turned over to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit group in San Francisco that advocates for greater digital privacy protections, as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit the group has brought. The group provided the documents on the 2006 episode to The New York Times.

Marcia Hofmann, a lawyer for the privacy foundation, said the episode raised troubling questions about the technical and policy controls that the F.B.I. had in place to guard against civil liberties abuses.

“How do we know what the F.B.I. does with all these documents when a problem like this comes up?” Ms. Hofmann asked.

In the cyber era, the incident is the equivalent of law enforcement officials getting a subpoena to search a single apartment, but instead having the landlord give them the keys to every apartment in the building. In February 2006, an F.B.I. technical unit noticed “a surge in data being collected” as part of a national security investigation, according to an internal bureau report. An Internet provider was supposed to be providing access to the e-mail of a single target of that investigation, but the F.B.I. soon realized that the filtering controls used by the company “were improperly set and appeared to be collecting data on the entire e-mail domain” used by the individual, according to the report.

The bureau had first gotten authorization from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor the e-mail of the individual target 10 months earlier, in April 2005, according to the internal F.B.I. document. But Michael Kortan, an F.B.I. spokesman, said in an interview that the problem with the unfiltered e-mail went on for just a few days before it was discovered and fixed. “It was unintentional on their part,” he said.

Mr. Kortan would not disclose the name of the Internet provider or the network domain because the national security investigation, which is classified, is continuing. The improperly collected e-mail was first segregated from the court-authorized data and later was destroyed through unspecified means. The individuals whose e-mail was collected apparently were never informed of the problem. Mr. Kortan said he could not say how much e-mail was mistakenly collected as a result of the error, but he said the volume “was enough to get our attention.” Peter Eckersley, a staff technologist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation who reviewed the documents, said it would most likely have taken hundreds or perhaps thousands of extra messages to produce the type of “surge” described in the F.B.I.’s internal reports.

Mr. Kortan said that once the problem was detected the foreign intelligence court was notified, along with the Intelligence Oversight Board, which receives reports of possible wiretapping violations.

“This was a technical glitch in an area of evolving tools and technology and fast-paced investigations,” Mr. Kortan said. “We moved quickly to resolve it and stop it. The system worked exactly the way it’s designed.”