Q. Why am I getting this email?
A. You are receiving this email because we have someone in common who recently sent an email to a list of people, and in the process, shared every one's email address with everyone on the list. This is generally not a good thing to do. Your email address should be guarded like your phone number or social security number, and only given to close friends and family. I have decided to stop blaming the senders and accept the fact that people JUST DON'T KNOW BETTER. So I've decided to start a campaign to educate folks about email courtesy and self-protection.
Q. Why should I be concerned with protecting my email address?
A. I suppose you are appreciative of every piece of mail that you receive in your INBOX, right? What, you mean you actually get some unwanted SPAM? Unsafe email usage is one way, though not the most common way, that spammers find you. Sometimes it may be just a remote friend or friend of a friend, or friend of a friend of a friend; you get the picture, and perhaps they just THOUGHT you might enjoy some interesting tidbit. It is often easier for them to REPLY TO ALL, than to edit the list of emails removing people they don't know (Don't get me started on cleaning up the CONTENT of email containing forwarded email, that's for another time).
It's important to know, however, that once your email arrives into someone's inbox, your email address is potentially accessible to spammers if there is a virus on the computer that is designed to harvest emails from the computer. Normally it's the address book that is hijacked, but plain email can also be looked at for email addresses.
Q. How can I protect my email address?
A. It is actually a good idea (imperative, in my opinion) that you sign up for a secondary address to give out to EVERYONE BUT YOUR CLOSEST FRIENDS AND FAMILY. I recommend GMAIL but there are plenty of other services offering free mail. You can set it up to FORWARD any email received at that address to your primary email address. So you only ever have to check one email address. If that secondary email is the source of unwanted mail then you just close it and create a new secondary email address.
That's the easiest way to protect yourself.
Q. How do I change my email habits to help protect other people's email address?
A. Glad you asked. To protect other's and not contribute to the unintended exposure of their email address, follow these guidelines when sending email to multiple recipients:
1. If everyone knows each other on the list and it is a fair assumption that they would want the others on the list to know their address, then go ahead and use the TO: or the CC: fields when composing mail. Just ask yourself "Does each person I am sending this email MIND that I'm giving their email to each person on the list"?.
2. If you are not sure of the question posed in 1. then DON"T USE THE TO: or the CC: Field, ALWAYS USE BCC:.
You have nothing to lose by using BCC and always a chance to expose someone to SPAM by using TO: or CC:.
3. The BCC: field may not be visible in all mail programs. But you can be sure it is available. You just have to find it or turn it on.
Q. So what exactly IS BCC:?
A. If you are old enough to remember the time before copiers and computers, in order to make a copy of a handwritten form, a form would include one or more CARBON copies usually yellow or pink. As you pressed down on the top white page when filling out the form, the bottom pages would also get filled out. These were called carbon copies. Email borrowed this term and applied it to sending email to other people (CC) besides the intended person (TO:). When you want to send an email to additional people but not let anyone know that these people were included, you put their names in the BCC field or Blind Carbon Copy field.
So to summarize:
1. TO: field recipients see who the other TO: recipients are as well as the CC: recipients but NOT the BCC recipients
2. CC: field recipients see everyone included in the TO: field and the CC: field but NOT the BCC recipients.
3. BCC: recipients see who the TO: recipients are and who the CC: recipients are but not any other BCC recipients
- Use To: to target the primary recipient of your email
- Use CC: to include people that may not be the main target of your email but that you want to FYI them AND when you want everyone to see who is being included in the distribution list.
- Use BCC to protect people's email address and to not reveal who else was sent the email
Q. I have a question.
A. Any comment or questions, please go here
Or reply to this email.
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