I attended a lecture series a few weeks back that was held in the parish hall of an Episcopal church. Just before the last class began, I ended up speaking with the head priest about e-mail. He's a stereotypical Anglican priest -- white hair, British -- yet irreverent enough to make him charming. He spoke about his frustration with people who don't include a greeting or a closing in their e-mails. I started to agree with him when, suddenly, he said aghast, "And have you EVER used the Bcc option? I think it's the devil's work!"
The Wrong Time to Bcc
Okay, I'll confess. I've done the devil's work. My heyday of using Bcc (blind carbon copy) was between the ages of twenty-three and twenty-five. Occasionally, I would Bcc my best friend on some of the e-mail exchanges with guys I was dating to save me the trouble of having to forward them to her later. It was wrong. I know. But it's so much easier to show someone an actual e-mail then to say, "Well, he wrote me this e-mail that said. . ." What stopped me from Bcc'ing my friend all the time was pure paranoia -- how did I know Bcc wasn't going to rat me out? Or what if I had an absent-minded moment and put her in the Cc widow instead?
I can't help but wonder, why is it even an option? What e-mail engineer decided that we had to have the opportunity to make invisible third parties privy to our afternoon musings -- especially when, again, you can just forward what you wrote. I won't go so far as to refer to Bcc as the devil's work, but, yes, it is an ethical violation. It is no better or worse than the regular run of-the-mill sins such as lying, gossiping, or mocking someone behind their back. This is the virtual way to commit those age-old crimes.
The Right Time to Bcc
I'm not convinced this was the original purpose of Bcc, but it does come in handy in the way of combating Cc problems. Personally, I have never cared where my name falls on the grand scale of a mass e-mail. If I'm first, I don't consider myself a rock star, and if I'm last, I don't consider myself a peon. I don't care, but rumor has it that some people take mass e-mail placement very personally. Lately, I've noticed friends troubleshooting this by Ccing themselves on a mass e-mail and Bccing everyone else. Ignorance is bliss -- we don't know where we were placed and can go jovially about our day. Bccing the peanut gallery also alleviates the REPLY ALL problem. This is when people on the mass e-mail who you don't know hit "reply all" and you have to read their banal comments when you're just trying to get your work done. Opting for blind copying here also saves everyone the trouble of having to scroll down through a thousand names just to find the message itself. Well, I feel much better knowing Bcc isn't all bad.
Going to Confession
I came clean to my priest about all this. I told him I think Bcc is fine when mass e-mailing, he agreed, and I also told him that once upon a time I did Bcc behind some boys' backs. He said, "Really? You did that?" He then leaned forward to a young gentleman sitting across the table and said, "Eric, how would you feel if Samara did that to you?" Eric replied with a monotone, "I wouldn't know about it."
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The BCC arose merely because it was standard as correspondence from our pre-email days, dating way back to the 1950s and earlier when it was actually a carbon copy sent to a few, instead of the standard carbon paper inserted into the manual typewriter, and those cc recipients were sent the carbon instead of the original. I remember watching secretaries wash their hands after they finished using the messy black carbon paper.
But that question is still the same. I think usually the BCC went to the originator of a discussion, so that that person could keep up with what was going on without other people knowing.
Without other people knowing? My God.
Lawyers use BCC to send correspondence to a client, at times.
And if you do there are, in fact, reasons to bbc, such as keeping a co-worker updated.
I also use it when I'm copying someone who is well-known if everyone on the project doesn't need to know the address.
It's useful as all hell too when the purpose of an email is to lure someone to a meeting, like those ones they're getting fired at. When someone is on the knock-list and HR is BCC'd on the "let's have lunch buddy" email... they know to send a representative to lunch with us.
It's a world full of convenience if you look for it; Devil's work my ass.
First of course, is how BCC is properly used for mass mailings. I'm sure there is no debate here.
But secondly, when I write a letter *I* decide who gets to read it and I have no obligation to tell all the readers who else is reading it.
I use BCC for business often so that my associates know where in the process I am with a client. The client doesn't need to know the 4 other people, who they are or why they need to read it. And I sure as hell don't want techguy@fljsfkljsl.com getting emails directly from my client if the client see his name in a CC list. But certainly techguy needs to keep appraised of what I'm saying to a client. So I use BCC.
And it is my responsibility to make sure I don't say something stupid in the email.
Being worried that BCC is a privacy violation is just ridiculous. BCC sends an email that I wrote. Forwarding sends an email that someone else wrote. So which is more evil and more at risk of harming privacy? Obviously forwarding someone else's email is. I invite any of you to send me a nasty email so I may forward it to everyone else. And my reply to you will be tolerantly polite because I'll BCC your mother ;)
The privacy purpose is to protect private information, such as someone's email address, which they gave you to commuicate with them, not to distribute to all your friends and associates. If you CC a bunch of 'your' friends who don't know each other, you are in serious breach of email manners. It is like giving someone's phone number out to a stranger. How would you feel about that? This is the number one sin, but most folks don't get it.
And apparently you don't get it because you first used BCC to do exactly the thing BCC is designed to avoid: giving away personal information. The breach is exactly the same: your email pretends to be a private conversation, but it isn't. Who should trust you to understand and explain BCC, actually you blame BCC for your ethical failings.
Now the administrative purpose. BCC is useful for two different situations. The first is the original purpose. The term derives from the real world where you actually made carbon copies of letters, and you blind out certain recipients who are 'not the target' of the communication. For instance, you might BCC yourself. It isn't 'to you', but you might want a copy of the email as delivered, and what you send from your email software (like Outlook) is 'not a copy' of the email received by the person you are sending it to. You may also, in a business situation, want to BCC your boss, so he knows what you are doing. He isn't a party to the conversation, but he has an oversight duty. This is what BCC is for in the first administrative instance.
The second administrative instance is an obviously shared email, like one that starts: Hey Guys! In this case, you hiding private information, but 'not hiding' the fact that the email has multiple recipients. In fact, you should just send these to yourself and BCC everyone else.
Who knows? there may be someone on the list looking for addresses to send spam to. Insurance agent?
HAHAHAHAHA!
BCCing for mass emails is the greatest thing in the world. I do it every time. My reasons are the exact same as those stated above, but also because of perception. When I BCC emails I get a lot more responses, and the responses are personal, which I prefer. As with any mass email, you never know who will appreciate it and who will just be annoyed. It's better to limit the annoyances by remove the extra "reply alls" from their inboxes.