Let Recipients Know the Nature of Attachments

Even though most of our workplaces now outfit our computers with spam and virus blockers that do a pretty good job of protecting us from all of the nasty junk bouncing around out there on the internet, malicious emails still manage to slip through every now and then. So if you want your message to get through to your recipients and you want your readers to be confident enough to open and read it make sure to give them a clear idea of what they’ll find inside. A quick description (“Here’s an Excel spreadsheet with the May sales figures”) will assure them that the file is actually from you and let them know what program they need in order to open it. I’ve even seen some people include links that their recipients can use to download free programs like Adobe Acrobat when the files are in a format such as PDF. What a thoughtful gesture!

On the other hand, an attachment that comes with a generic description or no explanation at all may be ignored by your correspondents or automatically relegated to a spam folder where it will be hard to find and recognize as a legitimate file. Because spammers and virus writers have become very good at “spoofing” or faking email addresses, it’s not enough that your message says that it’s from you. I find emails in my spam filter all of the time that look just as though I’d sent them to myself despite the fact that they’re hawking Viagra knock-offs (Viagrow, anyone?) or trying to get me to adopt bulldog puppies from Africa. In order to overcome the uncertainty this creates you need to make your readers confident that your message is from you and that your attachment is safe to open.

Of course some people take caution too far and wind up living in fear of opening every email or clicking on every link on the web. You don’t want to become one of them, terrified that every interaction you have with your computer is potentially sending your credit report to Buglarian mobsters or will cause your PC to start smoking and melt into a pile of plastic and circuit boards. People who are scared of or intimidated by their computers rarely learn to make efficient use of them. Just the same, you don’t want to go around opening things will-nilly. Emails about certain topics-- Anna Kournikova, Viagra, the entire country of Nigeria-- should set off alarm bells in your head and be treated like the potential landmines they are. Unless you’re involved with professional tennis, work in the pharmaceutical industry or are expecting a big inheritance from Nigeria, messages related to those topics should probably be deleted ASAP.