Politics and "Reply to All" Don’t Mix | Business Email Etiquette

You receive a forwarded e-mail about a political issue from a coworker, which has also been forwarded to other people you don’t know. Is it proper for you to comment on the message and hit the “Reply to All” button? If you don’t Reply to All to a political message you disagree with, will the other recipients think you favor the expressed opinion?

First off, if you are asking yourself these questions the sender made three big boo-boos that we talk about on this Blog on a regular basis.

Forwarding of political commentary is risky business because not everyone is going to agree with you.
If everyone’s e-mail address is visible in the To: field, the original sender has breached their contact’s privacy by exposing their e-mail addresses to strangers.
Sending this type of junk during business hours on company computers.

Just because the sender breached everyone’s privacy, doesn’t mean you then can e-mail those you don’t know with your opinion. No matter how important the topic is. Do what is right and only e-mail the sender your opinion.

Who cares about those who don’t know you think? Silence doesn’t necessarily mean agreement. There are many online, myself included, who ignore these type of forwards because of the potential problems replying can cause even with those you do know.

Many times, as in this case, e-mail etiquette dilemmas are created by those who don’t have a clue in the first place. When this happens consider pointing the sender to my article on how to avoid breaching their contact’s privacy again in the future.