Have you ever gotten put on a massive email list that went out to a whole bunch of people that you didn’t know or care about? I’m not talking about those annoying emails that people forward to you (that’s a whole other story). Well, I have…MANY TIMES! It’s really frustrating to see the lack of email common sense that people have these days. If you are reading this and you are asking yourself “what is Bcc?“, then you should do us all a favor and delete your email account, because at this point you don’t deserve to even have one.

What is Bcc you ask?

“In the context of correspondence, blind carbon copy (abbreviated Bcc:) refers to the practice of sending a message to multiple recipients in such a way that conceals individual email addresses (mentioned in “to” field of the mail) from the complete list of recipients.”
Source: Wikipedia

Bcc is mainly used to let another person know (like your manager) that you sent an email to a certain individual without that individual knowing about it. Yes, it’s a little shady if you ask me.

So please, the next time you want to send out an invitation or any email that you know people can and will “reply to all”, use the Bcc field.

Why is this so important you ask?

1) Respect people’s privacy by NOT sharing their e-mail address with everyone.
2) If any of these people have a virus, it may spread to everyone.
3) If any of these people have SpyWare on their computer (by mistake), then your address list might be shared through that security means.
4) Because not all email applications have threaded discussion. Plus, no one cares if Adam will not be making it to your party (thanks for the “reply to all” email update ADAM).

Example @Yahoo!:

Example @Gmail: