Using the Bcc field

[busterb]

OXB was kind enough to reformat the mail I sent him. So here it is! I cut some of his choice word on the subject.
BTW. This is one of my pet peeves!

Email
Use The Bcc Field To Protect Others’ Privacy



You have, no doubt, seen numerous email messages sent out to the masses and ultimately land with a kerplunk
in your inbox—you know, the messages with more text in the Cc field than in the actual message.
You may or may not recognize some of the other recipients’ addresses, but what you do recognize is your name
in an email address that’s sitting in the middle of the field, and now everyone else will recognize it, too.

Sending group emails using the Cc field is fine if you’re talking about a manageable group in a work or family setting.
Unfortunately, a few people (and you know at least one of them) like to dump their entire address book into the
To or Cc field and send out copies of whatever pass-along message is going around the Internet that week.

Setting aside the minor annoyance of the dubious message itself, broadcasting a slew of email addresses in such a
willy-nilly manner isn’t the smartest thing to do in a world prowled by spammers. Although it’s not terribly likely,
a malicious hacker could intercept the message at some point during its transit and skim off the trove of email addresses
in the huge To or Cc list. A more likely scenario, however, is that one of the many recipients will forward the message
—keeping the entire list of addresses intact—to someone else, who forwards it on, and on, and on. Eventually, all of
these addresses propagate to unknown quarters where they’re ripe for the pickin’.


The Down Low

There is an alternative for these situations, and it’s too bad more people don’t realize it’s available: Bcc (blind carbon copy).

Bcc is the field you’d use to copy a message sent to a particular recipient or recipients without notifying everyone else

as to who is receiving the message. Bcc might sound sneaky in some ways, but there are actually a variety of reasons

why you might want to use it.

For instance, a business might want to send a message to a group of clients without giving every client the list of all

its customers. Depending on the email application being used, a huge To or Cc list also might force recipients to scroll

down before they can actually see your message; using Bcc avoids this problem, too.

In addition, there are other reasons for using Bcc that are unrelated to the recipients themselves. For example,

perhaps you need to Bcc all of your outgoing messages to another email account for easy access on another computer,

or maybe you just want to back up the messages for safekeeping elsewhere.

Substituting Bcc for Cc also can reduce the number of unintentional (but seemingly inevitable) reply-to-all mishaps that

occur when a response meant for a single reader makes the rounds across dozens of desks. Send out an email message

to any large group of people, and someone is bound to click the Reply To All button. Depending on the content of the

original message, this reply might contain sentiments that aren’t suitable for the entire office, club, school, or family.

You can prevent this type of modern-day mishap from ever occurring if you limit which email addresses could become

victims of a recipient’s uncontrollable urge to click Reply To All.

One of the most important reasons to use Bcc these days, however, is privacy. Even if a recipient is one of thousands

whom you included on your Bcc list, he will never see a single one of those other email addresses—and neither will some

unknown, downstream spammer that sees the message later on.

Almost every Web-based email client or standalone program includes the capability for Bcc, but you might have to spend

a bit of time looking around for it. For instance, in Gmail, you’d need to click the small Add Bcc link directly below the To field

of a new message window. The same type of addition is necessary in Yahoo! Mail, too. If you use Microsoft Outlook, you’ll

need to open the new message, click the View menu, and select the Bcc Field option instead.

Spread The Word
Email makes communication a lot simpler than in the days when you really did need to load up a sheet of carbon paper

if you wanted to send a letter to more than one recipient. Now it’s almost too easy for well-meaning message senders to

scatter hundreds of email addresses across the Internet. So, the next time you get a large forward with a bunch of addresses

in the “To” or “Cc” fields, gently tell your friend about the wonders of using the Bcc option instead.