Your friend might get the idea that you sent him a message with some kind of virus in it. This is one of those instances that resulted from someone sending you an email message with dozens of people CC'ed - but not using the BCC (Blind Carbon/Complimentary Copy) option.
When a message is sent with everyone's email address visible (they DIDN?T use the BCC method), then any one of those visible addresses can be used by someone who eventually gets a copy of the message. It could be that they deliberately use it - or it could be that it was used automatically, unknowingly.
For example, Bob sends a message to 40 friends; one of those friends is Al. Al forwards the message (all the addresses are still visible) to 40 friends; one of those is Jane. Jane sends the message to 40 of her friends (all of those 40 addresses are visible, plus the first 40 that came from Al). One of Jane?s 40 friends is Steve. Steve reads and keeps the message.
Later (even years later), Steve gets a virus and the virus is designed to send a copy of itself to every address in every e-mail message that Steve still has on his computer. The virus sees a message with the 120 addresses (Bob?s 40 addresses, followed by Al?s 40 addresses and, finally, Jane?s 40 addresses ? all of those addresses are visible).
The virus picks one address out of the first 40 addresses (the ones from Bob). It then creates a message with a copy of itself and fakes the From: part of the new message with the address that it picked (this is easy to do). It then sends the message to the other 39 addresses. Then, it does the same thing with the other two groups of 40 addresses The virus's advantages for doing this are: (1) the address that it picked and used when faking the From: part of the message is most likely in the other 39 peoples' address books. Anti-spam programs will allow it through because that address is a known "good guy" (it's in their owner's address book). (2) all of the addresses in each group are probably good addresses.
This, of course, is why we should all be using the BCC option when we send messages to several family members (simultaneously) and/or other larger email groups - the addresses won?t be visible and can't be used by anybody else. The other thing that we should all be doing in addition to using the BCC method of addressing messages is:
before forwarding a message, delete all of the other addresses in the message (the ones that are visible because other people didn't use the BCC method) so that only the basic message is left. That way, we are cutting the line and no one after us will ever be affected because of our actions (or lack thereof).
Some people say this about deleting all of the visible addresses: ?That will take too much time? or ?That?s a lot of work.? In that case, the polite thing to do that shows great manners is to NOT forward the message, no matter how wonderful the content might seem.
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