Why I don't respond to email asking me to take action

If you recently sent me a forwarded email asking me to take action,  I hope you’ll take this response in the spirit of good will in which it’s intended.

 

I spent several years as an email advocacy trainer, teaching people how to use email to promote good causes.  Unfortunately, there is a lot of less than reputable material circulating on the web – including, sadly, some things that look really important or wonderful, like the one you sent me.  And there are good and not so good ways to use email for activism.  Knowing the difference between the real and the phony, and between good and bad ways to spread the word, makes the difference between cluttering the Internet with rumor and using the Internet to make the world a better place.

 

With your permission, here’s a primer.

 

How to tell if a request for action is legit or not

 

If you receive an email asking you to take action, here are a few tips for spotting "urban legends" and hoaxes:

 

• With email, as with pretty much anything else, if something sounds too good to be true, it is.  Bill Gates is not going to share his fortune with you (at least, not unless you apply to his foundation through the usual channels). Free trips to Disneyland are not being given out. 
• Most email asking you to do something to help someone you don’t know is not for real: there's no sick kid in Britain who is collecting postcards, and you can't save NPR's funding by sending an email petition to someone in Colorado.  This isn't meant to blast all such emails; some are legit.  But most are not.  I don’t know why people start them, but you should be very careful about passing them on.  In most cases, they are just a waste of time.
• Emails that ask you to sign petitions are usually not valid; and even if they are, they are not a good way to take action (more on this below).
• Be suspicious of emails that pass on information from unnamed sources or sources whose accuracy you can’t vouch for.  Good email activism, like good journalism, names its sources.
• Most purported email viruses that you get scare warnings about are not for real. 

 

Here are some ways to spot legitimate requests for action or help:

 

• Genuine requests often link to the website of a reputable organization dedicated to taking the kind of action you’re being asked to take.  For instance, if a friend sends you an email that contains a link to the ACLU or Act for Change website, that’s not just email gossip - it is passing on a legitimate communication from a legitimate organization that knows what it’s doing.
• Genuine requests should ask you to take specific action that makes sense: for example, writing to your elected representative about proposed legislation or to your local newspaper about something going on in your community.
• Good email activism asks you to take respected advocacy actions like calling, writing or emailing someone, or perhaps attending an event.  It doesn’t ask you to sign onto something like a petition that then leaves your hands and goes to lists and lists of people you don’t know.
• Genuine requests provide information from reputable sources that you can check yourself; they don’t ask you to take their word or the word of sources you don’t know or can’t check up on.
• Good email activism is dated, so that you know it’s current, and it tells you a date by which you should do whatever it is that it wants you to do.
• You can sign up to get email alerts from numerous organizations; the more reputable the organization, the more likely the alert is to be genuine and trustworthy.

 

If you're curious about whether an email activism request that you have received is legitimate or not, there are websites that carefully research and track such things.  A good site is http://urbanlegends.miningco.com/library/bltop25.htm?PM=ss12_urbanlegends

What to do if you still want to pass on an email

 

If you really think that an activism email is for real, or if it's just too good to keep to yourself, don't use the "forward" button to send it on.  Forwarded messages accrue; I’ve received emails with over a dozen screens of forwarding names and intro comments before the real message.  This is a problem for two reasons:

 

One, it's a pain. 

 

Two, more seriously, there are major privacy issues.  Anyone could get dozens if not hundreds of email addresses off a forwarded message; someone with less than pure intentions could send all those people spam, or pass their names on to unscrupulous merchandisers, or otherwise abuse their privacy.  Don’t do this to yourself; don’t do it to your friends.

 

So here's what you should do instead of forwarding emails:

1. COPY the message that you want to pass on.  Copy only the good stuff, not anything else that might have come with it when you got it, like anyone’s email address or comments.
2. PASTE what you copied into the body of a NEW email message.
3. Unless you're sending to a small group of people, preferably people who know each other, put in their addresses as "bcc," not as "to." You will need to have one address as "to" and that should be YOU.  In other words, send the new message to YOURSELF with everyone else as a "bcc" - this will keep their email addresses private, and if by chance someone to whom you send an email decides to forward your message to everyone they know, they won't be distributing the email addresses of all your friends. 

 

What’s wrong with email petitions?

 

Email petitions violate privacy, because they circulate names and other information to a huge audience of strangers.  The whole point of a petition is that it circulates widely - in a flash, what you send on will be in the hands of scores of people you don’t know.  You have no idea what they are going to do with that information.  Signing and passing on a petition is the equivalent of inviting telemarketers, spammers and hackers to target you and everyone else on the list, including all your friends to whom you’ve sent the petition.

 

You have no guarantee that an email petition will ever get anywhere.  Email has a very long life - petitions circulate for years, long after the person who started it has moved on.

 

Petitions in general are not a very good method of grassroots advocacy.  Even if they get where they’re supposed to go, the recipient won’t be hugely impressed by a lot of signatures from people she or he doesn’t know - people who didn’t care enough to take the time to write a letter, make a call, etc.  This is simply a fact of political life.

 

A note about attachments: 

 

You should never, ever, open an attachment from a stranger or any attachment that you are not expecting or haven’t been told about, since viruses spread that way.  And never pass on emails with attachments from people you do not know, even if you don’t open the attachment yourself - you could be subjecting someone to something nasty.

 

In general, it’s best just not to send attachments in activism emails; send links to websites instead if at all possible.  If you absolutely must send an attachment, state very clearly in your email that you are sending it, and what it is.  That way a cautious recipient will open it instead of deleting your message immediately.