BCC for Privacy!

Before Vegas, I received a bunch of emails for booths to visit during the show, new product lines, and so forth. Since Vegas, I’ve received many more emails…such as thanks for your order, credit applications from new vendors, and so forth. I love email and it has made life so much easier, but I dislike when people don’t use BCC for privacy.

Many people are protective of their email addresses. Think about it this way—As a retailer would you think of giving away your entire list of customers to other retailers and/or customers? When Reps send an email without using BCC for privacy that’s what you’re doing by including everyone in the To or CC fields.

Another reason to protect your list from abuse, and BCC it is—that viruses and spam-bots are now designed to go through mail files and address books looking for potential addresses. Sending a single message individually addressed to a large list of people increases, the chances that they all will be spammed or sent a virus should any one of them get infected.

 
Here’s how to use Blind Carbon Copy:

You can protect your friends and business associates email addresses by using the Blind Carbon Copy field. This works just like the Carbon Copy (cc:) field, except that the email addresses are not forwarded to each recipient. 

Put one email address (perhaps your own) in the “To:” field, and the rest in the “Bcc:” field. When your recipients receive the email, they will see your email address in the “To:” field and their own in the “Bcc:” field. The identity of your other recipients is hidden and they are protected from spammers.