Sean Lewis
With the wide variety of interests and activities in SaddleBrooke, there might be hundreds of formal and informal groups that all, quite understandably, communicate via email. With the proliferation of email viruses and spam that we all see today—not to mention unnecessary Reply Alls from group members—it’s important that organizers and coordinators of groups are aware of, and use, proper protocols involved with sending group emails.
Here’s some great information on this topic, compiled from Salesforce.com and the University of Pittsburgh:
“BCC” stands for Blind Carbon Copy, and it is an email feature that allows you to send copies of an email to additional recipients without revealing their email addresses to others on the email. Using BCC emails is especially useful and important when sending group emails to multiple people who may not know each other. Recipients in the BCC field are invisible to other email recipients, and their email addresses are prevented from unnecessarily being stored in all other recipients’ email accounts, serving as a significant firewall between group email users and the spread of email spam and viruses. Using BCC also helps to prevent accidental (and bothersome) Reply All messages that can, in turn, lead to lengthy and unnecessary email threads.
The bottom line? Email users—especially those communicating with groups of people—should understand that using BCC greatly helps to reduce the spread of email spam and viruses—not to mention unnecessary Reply Alls—whereas unnecessarily using the CC field exposes all recipients to those risks. Please understand the difference, and choose wisely!
For more information, do a web search for “Why use the BCC field.”