Is there any way I can keep from letting people forward emails I have sent them onto others? In short: no. And it can get even worse. Much worse. Once you've sent email, it's gone and you lose all control over it. And by all control, I mean:
"Once you've sent email, it's gone and you lose all
control over it."
Note I said "reliably" in a couple of cases. There are technologies, such as "bugs" or simple image tracking for HTML formatted email, that can sometimes allow you to tell that an email has been opened. This is not 100% accurate, and hence cannot be absolutely relied on, mostly because modern mail clients often have the required functionality turned off by default as a security and privacy measure. And "opening" an email does not necessarily mean that the email was actually read or even seen by anyone. But in regards to your question, it's the last one that should causes us all to think. I'll put it more clearly: you cannot prevent someone from forwarding your email, and you also can't prevent them from changing it before they do so. Get that? Not only can the forward your email, but they can change what your email says. When someone forwards an email, that email simply becomes the body of a new email, that can be edited before hitting send. And by edited, it could be as simple as changing a "yes" to a "no", an "I love you" to a "get out of my life", or perhaps "the boss is a genius" to "the boss is an idiot". You get the idea. If you were concerned about your email being forwarded, you can be even more concerned now. You really do need to trust your recipients. So, if email is such an unreliable medium, what can you do? Well, the simplest first step for this particular issue is to save all your outgoing email. That way you'll have a record of what you really said. Second, don't say anything in email that you wouldn't want to be made public, and when things get "close", make sure you're only emailing it to someone you really trust. There are technologies such as cryptographic message signing that will allow message tampering to be detected, but currently they're used mostly only by some businesses and the tech savvy. To be honest it shocks me how much sensitive information is transmitted in email without any protection whatsoever (other than the silly disclaimer that boils down to "if this message wasn't intended for you, forget everything you just read"). I'm hopeful that over time these types of security solutions will get easier, and more common. And the bottom line is that if someone can read your email, they can still forward it, or copy/paste it to another email, and send it to anyone they choose, one way or another. Related:
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It's quite possible you've NOT been hacked. I get bogus bounce messages all the time. This article may help explain a little: http://ask-leo.com/someones_sending_from_my_email_address_how_do_i_stop_them.html Posted by: Leo at January 29, 2006 12:09 PMThere is a possible solution. Create a form using the standard Outlook email message. Edit the Properties of the "To" field to include a validation (such as [To] = "recipients_email"), or, simply disable Replying, Forwarding, etc. in the form. Save the form, then use it to send emails. Food for thought. :) Posted by: G Ramos at March 9, 2006 04:46 PMHardly. There's nothing to prevent someone from copy/pasting your message into a new message. Or for another mail program that doesn't use forms to ignore everything you've set up and simply allow forwarding. Posted by: Leo at March 9, 2006 05:41 PM"I'll put it more clearly: you cannot prevent someone from forwarding your email, and you also can't prevent them from changing it before they do so..." Not true, there's all sorts of access control software out there, and one specifically that works right out of Outlook... http://www.essentialsecurity.com/products.htm Posted by: NArita at April 7, 2006 03:34 PMI stand by my statement. Anything that can be viewed on-screen can be forwarded one way or another. Posted by: Leo at April 7, 2006 06:10 PMSaffe does pretty much all of the above (prevent forwarding, make difficult to copy/modify,...). The main drawback is that your recipient has to click on a link to view your message. Other than that it's basically used like regular email. Check it out http://www.saffe.com Posted by: Jeff at October 5, 2006 10:29 AMSomeone keeps hacking my email and then giving my password back. So that I'm able to use my email and then at other times I'm not. Can you tell me how to make my hotmail secure so that the hacker cannot hack it again? Please reply quickly before the hacker hacks my email again! Posted by: Nora at March 25, 2007 08:09 AMI read the article and comments, but nothing seems close to what happened to me. This is everyone's worst nightmare: My ENTIRE hotmail account of 1,600 e-mail messages (received since 2003) was somehow recently sent to a friend's PC! I was working on another friend's computer sending out notices of an upcoming event. Oddly,here was no reply button, so I sent each individual an email by going to file and send. A weird box came up that warned of either a virus or worm, but also stated it could mean I was simply sending out repeated text. The warning asked if I still wanted to send (which I did, as much of the text was indeed repeated text of the same event). Soon thereafter, three of my friends reported receiving emails from the owner of the PC with strange attachments. The owner, an honest person, denys this. As mentioned, only one of these friends (boyfriend) also received my WHOLE email account with access to all my private mail! Does it sound as if my account was hacked into, or the PC I was using, or perhaps the PC of the recepient of my 1,6000 private emails? Needless to say this is a nightmare. Is there any possiblity the receiver of these e-mails could even be responsible? How do I find out? Who should I report this to? My privacy was grossly violated! Thanks. Posted by: Marie at May 15, 2007 02:03 AMI recently received a spoof email that I can NOT forward to the spoofed bank's investigation section or anyone else (not even to myself). I can forward any other message to anyone I like. What's going on? Posted by: Herb R at January 10, 2008 09:59 AM-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- No way to know without more details of how it's failing. Thanks, Leo
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