What Part of BCC Don't You Understand?

It never ceases to amaze me how many well educated people send out tons of e-mails to everyone on their e-mail address list without using a BCC. Whether it's a joke, business tip, or "fill in the blanks" -- I really don't need my address shared with the people on your list.

A great many people are protective of their email addresses, and they don't care to receive e-mail from random people on the net, or your dear friends for that matter. You've also sent their email address to everyone else on the mailing.

Would you give out someone's unlisted phone number? Probably not...at least I hope not. Why is e-mail any different? It's just common courtesy. Well, perhaps, not so common. I recall gently mentioning this to a friend because of her jokes sent to my business address without a BCC. Her response was, "My friends would never do anything." That may be true, but I still don't need it.

When it didn't stop, I simply blocked her from that address. She has another address of mine, and she still includes everyone on the list. Look at it from another perspective, would you send your entire holiday card list out with each card you sent?

For business, how about giving away your contact list? Hmmm...sounds like a smart move. Right? That's what you're doing by including everyone in the To or CC fields. And, some recipients on your mailing might consider everyone on your list fair game for similar mailings.

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. Out of respect for your recipients, please consider not listing them each individually in your mailings?

As far as Google, not using BCC when sending email to a large group who don't know each other appears to be against Google's Gmail's program policies. It's one of the prohibited actions, selling, exchanging or distributing to a third party the email addresses of any person without such person's knowing and continued consent to such disclosure.

Case closed.