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DADDY BOB'S COMPUTER Q & A
September 9,
2007
Q.
How do I send an email to several people
without showing all the names and addresses
of those I'm sending it to?
A.
You use the Bcc: address space
of your email program.
Bcc, in email, is short for blind carbon
copy, and refers to the practice of
sending a message to multiple recipients
in a way that their email does not
contain the complete list of all the
recipients. (If you are too young to
know what a carbon copy is, ask your
parents or grandparents.)
Since
normally only the To: and Cc: spaces are
displayed, It was very surprising to learn
that many frequent email users weren't aware
that the Bcc: even existed. I will use
Outlook Express in these examples, but all
email programs are similar.
With
Outlook Express open, click on Create Mail
icon and this dialog opens:
To the
left of the To: and Cc: there is a little
book icon. When this is clicked, this dialog
opens displaying your address book and the
three address boxes including the Bcc: one,
which until now you may not have known
existed.
An address can be
placed in any of the 3 following
fields:
To: Normally, the primary
recipient of the email
Cc: Others who you want
inform of the message (carbon copy)
Bcc:
People that are being discreetly or
surreptitiously informed of the
communication, but who cannot see any of
the other addressees.
To place
a recipient into any of the address boxes,
highlight the name and click the
corresponding button -> for the space you
want to use. More than one recipient can be
selected at a time.
To send
email to several recipients without them
knowing the names and addresses of each
other, place your name in the To: space, and
all the rest of the recipients in the Bcc:
space.
Why
should you use the Bcc: space instead of the
To: space when sending or forwarding to many
people? Here are some good reasons you may
want to consider.
-
to send a copy of your correspondence
to a third party when you do not
want the primary recipient know that
you are doing it or when you do not
want the primary recipient to know
the third party's e-mail address.
-
to send an email to many people
without disclosing the other
recipient’s names or addresses. This
can be done by addressing a message
to yourself and filling in the
actual intended recipients in the
Bcc: field.
This is a good
anti-spam precaution because it
avoids making a long list of e-mail
addresses available to all the
recipients. For this reason, it
ALWAYS makes sense to use the Bcc:
field when forwarding emails.
-
to prevent an unscrupulous program
from trying to harvest e-mail
addresses from your address book and
the To: or Cc: lists for the purpose
of further propagation of malware.
One other note on a courtesy that
everyone should follow when forwarding
emails. ALWAYS remove the lists
of previous To: and From: names, and
ALWAYS use Bcc: to forward the
email.
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