Curious About the Reason for a BCC Email

I always use it when emailing a group, because it's not my place to share someone's email address with others.

She is probably protecting the privacy of the other people. I wouldn't necessarily appreciate it if my personal email was visible to a bunch of people that I may or may not know.

I use it to 1) keep other people's information private, 2) to cut down on the massive list of emails, 3) clue in someone (like my DH) on something so I don't have to repeat it/he gets it first hand. Like an email of some importance between me and his sister or something. And 4) it keeps Reply All from spamming everyone else.

I HATE when people share my email address with other people. I can bet she did it out of respect, in case anyone else felt the same.

ETA: You are WAY over thinking this. It was a courtesy, not a conspiracy.

This is done for 2 reasons:
1) in case people don't want their emails shared and
2) it prevents those emailed from getting "reply all" responses.

It's a courtesy.

ETA: She may do this as a default, because of the above. Even people who don't care about sharing their email get annoyed with reply all. If she works in a business setting - or has in the recent past - it may be training. We are STRONGLY encouraged to do group emails this way at work.

It is done for privacy.
And so that, EVERYONE cannot "see" your own or other's e-mail address, in the e-mail.
I personally hate, when people do group e-mails and they display EVERYONE's e-mail address in the "sent to" box. It is rude. I don't want my personal e-mail address, to be had by anyone I don't know and then I get junk mail or weird solicitations etc.

E-mail addresses, are contact, information.
It is thus, regarded as "private" information, by many.

I did this when I was President of a booster club and later secretary of another booster club.

The bottom line was to protect the privacy of personal email addresses going out in a mass email.

Personally, I have no issue with it because when someone does it... I realize it is to not "advertise" my personal email address to all receipients.

I'm sure it was not meant in a manner to create adversity with you or others.

Hope that helps!

I guess I'm mostly echoing what others said about not sharing everyone's email address... but just in specific response to you SWH: It isn't really an issue of not trusting others not to SELL your email address, but of not getting ADDED to everyone's contact list. When your email gets a virus, EVERYONE in your contacts gets exposed... why widen that circle needlessly? Also, there are a few folks out there who still love a good email forward (ugh) and your friend might not want to expose ALL of her friends to the daily stream of "if you love your mother..." dictates!

Finally, and most probably true in THIS case, a BCC (mostly) stops you from getting the "I'll be there" responses flooding your inbox when you really don't care who else is coming.

HTH
T.

I use BCC when I send things for work to multiple subcontractors/vendors because they are competitors. This way, they don't necessarily know who else is receiving the email/bidding on a project. It also keeps people from hitting "Reply All" and the others getting lots of unwanted/unneccessary emails.

I use it personally when I don't know who else has the others' emails so it's not my place to distribute them. Some people love to hit "reply all" so again, BCC minimizes that. It also elminates someone in turn using email addresses that I inadvertantly gave them for unwanted jokes, spam etc.

Another thing it does, especially if there are lots of recipients, is cut down on the clutter if/when the email is printed.

In your case, I suspect it could have been done out of the declutter, reply all, and email address disclosure reasons I gave above. It could have also been done so she didn't have to hear or have any drama of "is so and so invited?", "why isn't so and so invited?", and/or "I'm not coming if so and so is there?"

Like Amanda said, there are times that I do not feel it is my place to share other peoples' e-mail addresses with others that would not otherwise have it.

Personally I do not like it when 'businesses' do not BCC their list and everyone's address is the world's to see.

If one of your friend's computer catches a virus, the virus will not be sent to friends of friends since they will not inadvertently have your email address. It is a courtesy.

Perhaps she was just keeping email addresses private. I do that sometimes when I don't know if everyone that I'm emailing knows each others email addresses.

Blind copy is supposed to be a courtesy. I wish my friends would do it when they send stupid forwards.
She just might have figured that keeping your email addresses private from each other was the way to go.

I used to have a family member who would add every email address to his address book and then send forwards, some funny, some politically charged and some downright offensive and rude, to absolutely EVERYONE in his address book. Not only was this annoying but he very well could have jeapordized someone's job by sending innappropriate emails to someone's work email.

Sounds like your friend was being courteous. :-)

It is good that you have no privacy issues but a lot of people do. You could tell your friend to next time put your information in the TO line and then just BCC everyone else. :-)

One of my friends told me that he does this because the e-mail addresses end up in everyone's address book when they're not BCC and that if someone's account is hacked that person has access to all the addresses in the book. I don't know if that's true.

I suggest that some people do not want their addresses known to others for whatever reasons they have and I respect them enough to do BCC. To figure out who doesn't care and who does is just too much work so everyone gets their messages BCC.

It is not up to me to be sure that everyone has good reasons for their choices. And I've learned to not try to second guess anyone else's reasons for doing anything.

She's probably just trained to do this. I often do it to because of protocols at work and when I e-mail on behalf of volunteer organizations. It also prevents the very annoying "Reply All" tendency that people have.

Another reason might be for replies. If everyone is Bcc'd and hit "reply all" by accident, only the sender will get the reply. Everyone on the list won't get 20+ replies (or however many people got the email).

Sometimes I do that when I don't want people to have to deal with the reply alls. She may have been trying to spare you all the back and forth e-mails of people talking about why they can't come, or might come, or will come....

Not everyone wants their email blasted in a forward. Privacy is lost on people these days.

it's a courtesy.
it's nice that don't mind having your address shared, and that like most good people you wouldn't do anything nefarious if addresses were shared with you.
but she's abiding by accepted guidelines of courtesy for the greatest amount of people. she can't and shouldn't have to figure out what each recipient's individual preferences are. there's really no need to get offended over it.
think of it this way. i have no issues with nudity, and whenever possible go around my house in the altogether. but just because it doesn't bother me, i don't assume that anyone coming over should be equally relaxed about it. unless it's a good friend who shares my preferences, i put clothes on if other people are involved.
khairete
S.

I wouldn't read too much into a blind carbon copy (BCC). Maybe she had legitimate reasons. Maybe she didn't want to start gossip, or have certain friends not come because they didn't like other friends she invited.

I agree that it's somewhat strange, but then again we're just guessing at her reasoning which could have been valid.

If you think about it, when you receive an invitation in the mail you generally don't know the names of the other invitees.

ETA: Well the other moms already mentioned a completely valid reason and that is preserving the privacy of people's email addresses.

i'm so tech stupid, i didn't know what that stood for or how to do it. and i just realized there were a few times i should have. yikes. thanks for bringing it to my attention.

and for what it's worth i would have wondered the same thing as you.

I use BCC not to keep anyone from knowing who else got the email but to protect the privacy of my friends. Not all of my friends know each other, and there is no need for Jack to receive Joan's email address if Jack doesn't know Joan.

I am involved in a lot of groups and prior to FB, I was included in many group emails.

I was included in an AVON mass email after that and I could identify the last name with someone from one of the groups. I contacted the representative and she said she received my email address from her daughter and if I wasn't interested to just delete it. Okay, but I don't want to be subject to her email blasts in the future. It took forever to remove my email address from her email blasts.

I would never want to impose that on one of my friends, so if you were my personal friend, I would BCC everyone and protect the information you have shared with me.

So the answer was "respecting other peoples privacy", and you STILL have a problem? It sounds like she was trying to keep their addresses secret from YOU.

This is a common practice to help protect other's email address from becoming added to mass mailings, encoded with viruses, etc. She is just trying to protect everyone's privacy. People that show up can share their own email addresses, if they choose.

When I bcc someone I never think about (hiding) an email address from anyone specifically. I do it to keep from cluttering up the email of the person I am sending ough to. You said she sent out to all her friends? Did you even consider the fact that she sent it to YOU so she must also consider YOU her friend and that she also did not send YOUR email address out to others? If you are so worried about it just casually ask her sometimes why she bcc' s her emails.

Sending a bcc to a group is the polite thing to do, not a personal attack on you. In response to your SWH, just because you don't see it as an invasion of privacy doesn't mean others don't. In this day and age, email, addresses and phone numbers should not be shared until and unless you choose to share it to others. Not everyone is honest, sometimes even the people you see as your friends.

You all gave me a whole new take on BCC. I always thought it was a sneaky way to let people know what some else said. Again, I am not for the tech generation.

I did it when I was working and I didn't want people to reply all on something. And if they replied all it would simply clutter other peoples' inbox. I had one coworker who would reply all to say,"Thanks." UGH!!! She cluttered up everyone's inbox to say thanks. And thanks wasn't even directed at everyone because they didn't all do the work. It would be one person doing the work, but the Thanks went out to everyone's inbox! So annoying.
And just last night, we got invited to a playdate and all the addresses were in the To box. So, people have started to reply all. As mentioned by previous posters, I'm seeing the maybe comings, and not comings.