V. A. Shiva Ayyadurai, Dr. E-Mail: Inventor of Email, History of Email, Free EMail Tips

As a medium of communication, E-Mail is not secure. Sure, E-Mail is fast and convenient. Suppose you have sent e-mail to a friend which also contains personal information about yourself. Your friend could easily forward the e-mail to someone you would never have sent your personal information to yourself. This could be inadvertent but the damage is done. There is no UNDO command for this! Therefore assume that everyone can read your e-mails. Do not send confidential information via e-mail.

Offensive language, racist or discriminatory language also could end you up in trouble, even if you meant just humor. Remember the bottom line: Anything You Send by E-Mail Could Be Used Against You!

While E-Mail is great for communicating fast and easily, it can be confusing because the sender and receiver of such communications only see words ­ not gestures and emotions. Therefore, precision is central to E-Mail communications. Do not use capitalization unless it is necessary. Avoid sarcasm, as this can be very dangerous. For example, "What are you talking about?" can be construed in many ways: a joke, an attack or a sarcastic remark. Use a clear subject line, signature line, header, body and footer in all E-Mail communications.

Sending jokes or sarcastic e-mail to people you are not too familiar with could create unpleasantness, when the other person is offended by or misunderstands your jokes or sarcasm. In general, avoid sending such e-mail to people you do not know very well.

Use your address book. It is there for a reason! Create a group and add only people you know very well to this group. If you really have that urge to forward or send a joke to a friend, just send them to this group alone.