1. Being copied on an email along with 100 other people I’ve never heard of — without the sender using BCC. If I’m going to publish my email address to strangers I’d rather make that decision myself, thanks.

2. Being asked to send the email on to anyone who may have been left off by accident. You want me to go through the 60 names on the CC list and figure out who’s missing? In fact you ask all 60 people to do this?

3. Being sent obvious spoofs. Many people’s BS detectors are set too low or are switched off. Wow! If I forward this email Microsoft will give me $50? How could I resist? And you want me to find a file on my computer with a teddy bear icon and delete it because it’s a virus? Sure!

4. People hitting “reply all” to say they’ll be attending an event. Please tell the event organizer, not me.

5. People who don’t respond to emails. I know people who have literally hundreds of emails in their in boxes, and so in desperation they just delete messages or file them away without responding. This is just poor organization. My in box is rarely empty, but I try to keep it as close to zero as possible — preferably fewer than six items.

Bonus number 6. People who send attachments with no clear indication of what the attachment is and why they want me to open it. A message that says only “Check out this jpeg!” could as well be generated by a virus, and so I’ll treat the email as a virus and delete it.

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