The #1 most dreaded faux pas of online etiquette, for me, is when someone adds me to an e-mail list and regularly sends me corny viral e-mails or promotional stuff. It’s especially yucky when they CC: everyone’s address visibly into the header – which makes it easy for other chain e-mailers or commercial spammers to harvest my address and mercilessly blast it with more junk.

It’s not the 90’s anymore – mass E-mail isn’t the place for this.

If you stand your ground and bluntly tell relatives and co-workers you don’t want their forwarded e-mails, it often hurts their feelings. The culprits are usually warm, emotional, non-tech-savvy people who are still part of the “web 1.0″ culture which doesn’t understand social media sites and RSS feeds. Sending chain e-mail is their way of showing they care about you – and your asking someone to cease sending the “funny” and “important warning” mails can feel like a slap. Sometimes it can even end the relationship, if the person is especially sensitive or clueless.

How to Protect Your Inbox Without Hurting People’s Feelings

Being extremely diplomatic while defending your e-mail privacy can lessen the impact. Thank them for caring, explain why you can’t handle unsolicited e-mail, elicit their sympathy, and use the situation to introduce new social media tools that offer you better filtering controls:

Dear Aunt Selma,

I appreciate you thinking of me when you saw these kitten pictures – they’re quite adorable!

However, I wanted to let you know about some e-mail issues my account has been having. I typically get over 100 business e-mails a day that require a response on my part. Then I get almost 50 Viagra, penis enlargement and acai berry spams. If my inbox get even one tiny bit more cluttered with non-business or non-personal messages, I get really stressed out because I lose the important personal e-mails in the shuffle.

Therefore, I kindly ask that you do not add my name to CC: or forward me any e-mail message, unless it is written and addressed to me personally.

(Please uncheck my address from your list before you hit send.)

You are always welcome to send me a personal e-mail message about anything, and I’ll be able to see it and get back to you soon.

If you’d like to share interesting links or picture, I’d be happy to check them out outside of my e-mail box . These days most of my friends have moved over to Twitter (http://twitter.com) – why don’t we connect on there? Sign up https://twitter.com/signup (it only takes a minute), send me know your username and I’ll be able to see what you’re up to. You can discover links to interesting stories – share them with a huge community of people – and it’s so much more fun than e-mail!

Check out the Twitter Guide book – http://mashable.com/guidebook/twitter/ – and give me a call if you need any help signing up or figuring it out. I’d be more than glad to help you!

Love you and talk with you soon,

-Brett

p.s. Are you on Facebook? You can add me as a friend on there, too! My profile is http://www.facebook.com/blah-blah-blah

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How do you feel about unsolicited e-mails and forwards from relatives and co-workers? Do you tolerate them? How do you manage them?

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