Using BCC in your emails

What is BCC? It literally stands for “Blind Carbon Copy”, which is a hold over from the old days when copies of documents were made using carbon paper. (If at this point you are asking ‘What is carbon paper’, don’t worry about it, it was before your time’). So now that we know what it is, what would we use it for? For starters, it does help reduce the email addresses that are out there in InternetVille that can be used by spammers. Those low lifes that send out all the junk emails have programs that run around and grab email adresses. By puitting it in the BCC section, there little programs can’t find those addresses. Most importantly though, it keeps email addresses private within your group of recipients. For example, it might be OK if your son and daughter and Aunt Sally all know each others email address, but what about your various other friends or business associates? Maybe John loves hearing special things from you via email, but how do you know he wants the other 50 people you are emailing to have his email address? You don’t know this. So instead of putting it out there for the WHOLE WORLD to see, put the 50 recipients in the BCC section and no one will be able to harvest all the other email addresses. There might be other reasons to use BCC. Let me know by adding a comment. Also, let me know if you found this entry helpful.

Before I close, if you don’t currently see the BCC field in your email client (your email program), here are links that show you how to set it up for:

• Windows Vista

– click here for instructions written by John Barnett

• Outlook Express

– click here are your instructions on how to set this up.

• Outlook

– Heinz Tschabitscher has your method of setting this up.

Later, Brian