Email etiquette tip: the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) field

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Photo by Georgia de Lotz on Unsplash

Here’s an email etiquette tip some may not know: when you CC: (Carbon Copy) an email to a list of unrelated contacts from your regular account for a group or “blast” email, it’s considered to be poor etiquette. This is because all who receive the email will then be able to view each other’s private email addresses. Your contacts may or may not wish to have their personal or work email broadcast far and wide, and it’s safer to assume that they would rather not.

Next time, use the “BCC:” (Blind Carbon Copy) function to send an email like this. Put your own email address in the TO: field, which  sends it to yourself. Put the list of email addresses that you’re sending to in the BCC: field to keep everyone’s email private.

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Updated 9/17/2020 by Emee Pumarega

One thought on “Email etiquette tip: the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) field

  1. Agreed – one should never broadcast other's email addresses. This is how spammers get their lists, and you expose your entire recipient list to a "reply all" that could be very embarrassing.

    However – it should be noted that the BCC technique will only work for up to about 50 people. After that, ISP's will assume that the message is SPAM. And actually – if you are sending commercial mail without the ability to unsubscribe – it technically is SPAM. If it's important to communicate to a wide audience it may be time to invest in an email marketing campaign. At Email Broadcast here in Seattle – we're specialist at this.

    Good luck!
    Ken

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