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Oh please, make it go away...
A letter of introduction to one of the unsung heroes of Internet privacy: the ‘Bcc’ field in your email program. As opposed to the ‘To’ or the ‘Cc’ fields, where we would normally place the addresses of the recipients of our email messages for public viewing, the Bcc field allows us to enter the same addresses, secure in the knowledge that recipients’ details will not be disclosed to others receiving the same email.
Bcc is short for ‘Blind Carbon Copy’
In the days of pen and paper when middle-managers lived like kings and geek glasses were a cheap and reliable NHS option rather than face-furniture for pushy marketing executives, Cc was the term used to indicate that a carbon copy of a
letter had been made.
The name following the letters Cc was the person to whom the letter was being copied. Everybody who received the letter knew who else it had been circulated to. Bcc, however, was used to indicate that a carbon copy of the letter had been made but that this was not being acknowledged to the main recipient(s) of the letter.
In other words, a secret copy was being circulated to undisclosed participants. This rather dubious practice has found a useful renaissance in Internet email, as it is now mostly used to protect the privacy of recipients of messages and circulars that have been distributed to large groups of people.
There is a very good reason for not disclosing your personal distribution list in an email message. If you send a message to a number of people who don't already know each other, or have each others’ contact details, you're effectively broadcasting other peoples' email addresses to strangers.This constitutes a violation of privacy and really isn’t a clever thing to do. On the day this article was written I received two separate emails.
One was from a colleague bearing a stern warning to me and 67 other unsuspecting souls of yet another bogus virus with enough satanic powers to do everything from wiping my hard drive and every hard drive I ever purchase in perpetuity, to circulating my embarrassing baby pictures across the Internet and recalibrating my freezer’s coolness setting so my cookie dough ice-cream turns to cookie-dough milk.
The other email was from one woman to whom I’d unwittingly given my email address during a private industry launch (look, she said she was an accountant, ok!). This particular missive invited me and 85 other people I’ve never met to partake in unison of wine and cheese and networking opportunities.
But the 152 new addresses delivered to my email box in one morning is nothing. In fact, I’ve received messages from PR account managers and record company press officers with their entire database of press contacts plastered across the To: section of their email.
In case the simple pleasures of earning an honest living ever start to wane, my alternative future as a direct email marketer could well be secure.
Have you ever wondered why you get email from people you've never met, offering you money you'll never earn? Well, think about this.
How many people did you forward that email about the plight of women in Afghanistan to? You know, the one asking you to send a petition to sarabande@brandeis.edu? I first received that email on 7th November 1998 and since then I’ve been sent it so many times I can recite parts of it in verbatim.And on almost every occasion, the message has been accompanied by a string of email addresses of people I don’t know. All this despite the fact that Brandeis University was forced to close down that address in 1998, ‘due to a flood of hundreds of thousands of messages in response to an unauthorised chain letter’.
Of course, we’d like to support the cause of women in Afghanistan but it would be more effective for us to do so by lobbying our local MP or offering support, financially or otherwise, to a group campaigning for such causes.
Electronic petitions are really no better than chain letters and when they circulate the addresses of your friends they’re an open invitation to spammers.
Of course this isn’t the only way your address can end up on a spammer's database, but it is one way. And it's one problem you have the power to fix.
If you really need to circulate the latest movie of the exploding kitten to everyone who knows you, or you can’t help but pass on that chain letter because you’re worried that your brain might explode or evil elves will come round and pull your toe-nails out with rusty tweezers, then at least protect other peoples’ email addresses using the Bcc field.If you don’t, then you thoroughly deserve evil elves to having their wicked way with you.
If you concur with the contents of this message, please don’t perpetuate the problem by forwarding it to your friends and family. I already have a steady and rewarding job so I don’t need to have my editorial efforts broadcast across the Internet. Rather, digest its contents and extract the information you need to make your future email exploits a safe and pleasurable experience for all who know you.