E-Mail Netiquette

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E-Mail Netiquette

Introduction

Use Plain Text

Avoid Read Receipts

OOO's (Out Of Office autoresponders)

Can the Disclaimers

Other Guidelines

Further reading and useful links

Introduction

Improper use of e-mail is not only a security concern, it has the potential of reflecting poorly upon the sender. Never underestimate how quickly a potential client or other person of importance can delete a poorly written message. Patricia T. O'Conner made a point in her book "Woe Is I" when she wrote "Why should the reader bother with your message when you obviously didn't"? Your friends will overlook spelling and grammar mistakes, but there are people that will read your e-mails that do not know you and will judge you entirely by what you have sent to their inbox.

I hope to address three primary concerns- html mail, read receipts, and out of office replies. A fourth section groups other useful points that do not need a section of explanation.

Use Plain Text

Quoting George Dillon, "HTML (mail) usually looks like it has been designed by stoned amateur chimpanzees using Front Page Express with their feet." I could not agree more. Excessive use of fonts, animated graphics, colors, and other features of html mail distracts the reader's attention from the content and meaning of the message. Ironically, poorly written html mail is often lacking content and meaning. I attribute that correlation to the time devoted to dressing up the e-mail rather than proof reading it. A few italics or underlines are fine, just avoid making it look comical and distracting.

Not only does it often look bad, there are a growing number of privacy and security reasons to insist on plain text. There are just too many examples to cite, though I have provided links below that can do so.

Ever wonder why spammers love html mail? There is code that can be inserted that will notify them that they just hit on a valid address, just by viewing it in the preview pane! How? A html message can, for example, require your system to get a part of the message such as the graphics from an Internet source that they can track. Now there is a log that the graphic was viewed by a valid mail account that received the spam message! Additionally, a copy can get sent back to the sender with any comments added when forwarding it!

Use of html gives the impression that it is OK to have a signature with big, bold, goofy fonts that the recipient may not have installed on their system. Use the space for something more pertinent like a simple link to your home page.

If the message can be handled in plain text and in the body of an e-mail, do so! Nobody likes the 2 million byte overhead involved when sending an attached file when it could be done in 300 bytes of a plain text message body, especially in those unfortunate situations when a broadband connection is not available.

Avoid Read Receipts

Read receipts are bad netiquette. There is a link below to RFC-1855. Read it to see for yourself as well as to discover other guidelines I'm not going to cover in this article.

Opening e-mails and reading from one to the next will trigger a receipt to the sender if the sender has requested one. Thankfully there are e-mail programs that allow you as the reader to control and manage read receipts.

The notion that reading my e-mail is no longer a private act proves disconcerting. I have the right to communicate, or not, without being observed, particularly in a country where snail mail mailboxes are protected by federal law.

The assumption that because I open an e-mail means I read it is consistently erroneous among users that track mail they send. I may not respond immediately, for whatever reason, be it no time for a proper response, time needed to research an answer, or because it could be better answered by someone else. If I can toss an electric bill on the table for a few days without the utility company knowing while I read a new issue of my favorite magazine I should certainly be permitted to do the same with an e-mail that has no urgency. One should be able to read a message and write a reply when one wants to instead of feeling rushed to reply because the sender knows it was read and is expecting a reply.

Playing phone tag can be annoying enough. Using read-receipts as a tool to see when we are at our desk so that we can be attacked by phone calls is indicative of a manipulative personality better left on a deserted island with no Internet connectectivity. And, guess what- my caller ID cancels your read receipt!

Sending a message to a distribution list, newsgroup or list mail server may cause all subscribers to receive read receipt notices. Granted, it indicates the (lack of) abilities of the admin to properly configure the group or list mail server. However, with so many freeware and/or inexpensive packages ANYONE can start such a service, regardless of their intellect.

This is not only my personal pet peeve, but one of other professional journalists as written in this article by Mark Gibbs of Network World.

OOO's (Out Of Office autoresponders)

Be very careful with Out Of Office autoresponders. While they might serve a legitimate use for a company's internal mail use they too often find their way to people that should not receive them. Blackberrys or other mobile devices should replace your OOO if missing a message is of such importance.

OOO's have been considered spam when sent to mailing lists or back-fed in other ways to people that did not send the message. Some states have laws, and some Internet Service Providers have hard stances against spam from their domains, that could bring penalties to you or force your ISP to take action if a complaint is filed.

Spammers performing dictionary attacks have validated your address when they receive your OOO. Spammers using send-only or spoofed accounts can cause a performance problem to your mail servers if your company allows them to respond to Internet mail. Think of large volumes of spam hitting mail accounts with OOO's and multiply that by the retries a mail server makes in an earnest effort to deliver the OOO.

I could go on, but truthfully nobody summarizes the rest of the points I'd like to make better than Andrew Baker in his automated OOO reply.

Welcome to my ever-vigilant Out of Office AutoResponder.

Generally speaking, it is not a good idea to allow "Out of Office" (OoO) messages to be returned to mailing lists, and it is generally considered rude by the Internet community at large.

Most people are not going to want to know about your vacation, your week of training, or any other reason that you might have for not being in the office. Furthermore, you are notifying anyone and everyone that you will not be paying attention to your account or your network for a well-defined period of time.

In short, it opens you up to various security risks, including Social Engineering, as most messages of this kind return all sorts of vital information to the recipient.

It would be wise to consider taking an opportunity to speak to a knowledgeable admin in your IT department about the proper configuration of your organization's email servers (or your very own email client), so that you do not persist in afflicting others of the Internet community with unwanted/undesireable information.

If *you* are the network/email administrator, then you should take this time to impress upon your senior management team the importance of maintaining high security for your organization.

For more information about Network Security Services, please visit http://www.ultratech-llc.com/BrainWave/

In the unlikely event that you were simply forwarding an OoO message from some other inconsiderate netizen, you might want to consider changing the SUBJECT line (removing the text "Out Of Office") prior to forwarding the mail to the intended recipient(s).

http://www.goldmark.org/netrants/auto-resp/

http://hellomate.typepad.com/exchange/2003/09/out_of_office_s.html

http://www.emailreplies.com/

Can the Disclaimers

First off, no private or privileged information should ever be e-mailed without the use of some type of encryption.

Secondly, they're of such little (if any) value when overused. If an employee e-mails jokes and personal information with the disclaimers it waters down the merits of the disclaimer when it might be of value. I may also take the contents as representing the views of your company.

Thirdly, I am by definition of the recipient e-mail address, "the intended recipient."

http://slate.msn.com/id/2101561/

http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/stupid-disclaimers/

http://www.tbayit.com/blog.asp?show=15

Other guidelines

Read RFC-1855
Use the bcc (blind carbon copy) function if e-mailing a disparate number of people that do not know each other. Even if the recipients have similar interests not everyone appreciates their address, especially their work address, showing up in a to or cc line when there is a large list of recipients.
Consider taking a night class to expand your vocabulary if you cannot express yourself without excessively using 'emoticons'. Occasional use is fine to convey intentions in a brief manner or to assure the reader of the tone of which your words were meant. It is the excessive use in every sentence or animated html emoticons that will get a message deleted in a heartbeat.
Don't assume the recipient has the same software as you do. If you feel a need to send an attachment, let the recipient know ahead of time so it is not treated as another virus. This serves a second purpose of verifying that the recipient has the software to open the file.
When sending information about a news story, a technical bulletin and so forth, simply type a line or two explaining to the receiver why you thought this was important and include a link to the original site. Copying and pasting an entire web page into an e-mail may be a copyright violation as well as adding overhead to an e-mail that the reader may not think is as important as the sender.
If your anti-virus is set to reply to the sender that they sent you a virus, turn it off. This is known as AV software backscatter and serves no useful purpose because the vast majority of virus messages are spoofing the "from" address.
Use meaningful quotes in your replies. Over quoting a previous message, or not quoting anything at all, can cause your reply to loose its context.

Not following these simple guidelines will likely cause your messages to fall into certain rules processed by mail servers or mail clients, causing the message to never reach its destination.