Bcc is an abbreviation for blind carbon copy. If you add a recipient's name to this box in an e-mail, a copy of the message is sent to that recipient, and the recipient's name is not visible to other recipients of the message. Consider using the Bcc box when:
- You want your mailing list to remain private.
- You want to protect your recipients from possibly getting on a spammer's list. Consider this: If you send out a message to 10 people (and you don't put their e-mail addresses in the Bcc: box), if each of those 10 people forwards it to 10 other people, and if each of those 100 people forwards it to 10 more people, your original 10 e-mail addresses are now available to 10,000 strangers. Chances are pretty good that one of those 10,000 recipients is a spammer, or worse case, is infected with malware.
If you use Outlook or Outlook Express, and you don't see the BCC line when sending out messages, do the following:
- Click on "Create Mail" then click View on your menu bar and go to All Headers ... now you should see the Bcc: option along with the To: and Cc:
Another point to consider is that if an email is sent to you and there is a BCC list that you cannot see associated with it, and you click "Reply All" when answering the email, everyone on the BCC list will get a copy of your response. Stick with "Reply" if you want to keep your email address private or are sending a confidential response to the original message.
For Hotmail or Yahoo email users, the BCC box is readily accessible when inserting your contacts.
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