Computers - How to use the Bcc Line in Email

Email programs contain three lines for addresses.

The To: line is for the person or persons to whom you are sending the message.

The cc: or, on some programs it appears as Cc: stands for carbon copy is used to include someone who, for whatever reason, is receiving a copy of the email along with the intended recipient (the person in the To: line).

The bcc: or Bcc: line stands for blind carbon copy and is used to send copies to additional people WITHOUT THE INTENDED RECIPIENT OR THOSE BEING COPIED WITH A CC: KNOWING THAT THESE ADDITIONAL PEOPLE ARE RECEIVING COPIES.

The purpose of the carbon copy is to either keep an interested party informed or to subtly let the recipient or recipients know that someone else will also be following up. For instance a lawyer sends an email to an insurance agent inquiring as to why her client's forms have not been processed and on the cc: line copies the client and the adjuster at the home office. This has the effect of informing the agent that his insured has been informed as well as the home office. If all is in order, this simply keeps the lawyer's client and the insurance company's home office in the loop and also relieves the agent of having to follow-up with these people to let them know that he and the lawyer are working on the case. However, if the agent has just set the form aside and forgotten about it, the cc: will put him on notice that a "paper trail" is being created and he may have to do some explaining to the home office and/or the client if he doesn't get moving on this.

As to the blind carbon copy, this is a nifty tool that lets you send an email to a large number of people without forcing them to scroll through three or four screens worth of addresses (or wast three or four pages of paper if they print their emails) before they get to the contents of the email. The blind carbon copy is ideal for announcements that you send to everyone in your address book or for forwarding to everyone in your address book those great jokes that you receive in your email. With the blind carbon copy you can send an email to ten thousand people and the only names that each recipient will see will be the name/email address of the intended recipient in the To: line, their name/email address and your name/email address in the From: line. The names and email addresses of the other 9,999 recipients will not show because the blind carbon copy tool does not show them on the recipient's email.

In addition to saving your recipients from having to scroll through a series of addresses to get to the message, using the blind carbon copy also prevents spammers from seeing and copying these addresses. Of course, the people in your address book have the highest integrity and would never engage in spam mailings. However, when they forward the great joke to everyone in their address book some of those recipients may be spammers and, if you used the To:, rather than the bcc:, line to address the copy you sent out, the spammers in your recipients address book will now have the addresses of everyone in your address book.

When you use the blind carbon copy to send a general notice to a large number of people or to forward something to everyone in your address book you do have to put an address in the To: line. When I do this, I simply put my own address in here (you can email yourself from your own email) as it is simple and maintains everybody's privacy.