All,

Just FYI, this "BCC" field also has a somewhat sinister use  within
corporate America (if not
other nations as well).  There times when support personnel or
co-workers are
requested for services or actions via e-mail.  And there are times that
when a person has made several
requests for the same service that one final e-mailing will go out to
the person to whom the request is
being made with the requester's manager included in the "blind carbon
copy" field.
The idea is that the person making the request is letting his/her
manager know that the lack of action is somebody else's fault and
that they have made more than reasonable to make the request.

People have lost their jobs because of their lack of response to such
requests.

Bill Gallik
[log in to unmask]

----- Original Message -----
From: Kelly Pierce <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2000 8:26 PM
Subject: tech: blind carbon copy feature


: Here's an explanation of the reason many use the blind carbon copy
: feature.  Yeah, I'm not a fan of the indiscriminate use of the word
blind,
: but I think this use is here to stay so I'm learning to live with it.
:
: kelly
:
: the New York Times
:
: February 10, 2000
:
: Increasingly, E-Mail Users Find They Have Something to Hide
:
: By SUSAN STELLIN
:
:      When Spencer Grey sent a message to a group of friends and
:      colleagues last fall notifying them of his new address, he
thought
:      nothing of putting all of the recipients' e-mail addresses in the
:      To field of the message.
:
:      But when he returned from a vacation in Hawaii a couple of weeks
:      later, he discovered that one of his friends had copied the
e-mail
:      addresses of the other recipients and sent them an invitation to
a
:      party he was throwing in December -- on the theory that any
friend
:      of Mr. Grey's was a friend of his. For the most part, it was a
:      harmless, "the more the merrier" gesture. Except the party
:      invitation ended with a tongue-in-cheek reference to drugs, and
Mr.
:      Grey's e-mail list included some clients of his New York Internet
:      consulting business.
:
:      "It was this major e-mail faux pas," Mr. Grey said, adding that
he
:      was relieved that his friend's message was not more offensive.
:
:      "If I have learned anything, it's the value of the Bcc option,"
he
:      said.
:
:      Just as various aspects of electronic communication have
presented
:      new social issues or prompted the evolution of new etiquette, how
:      to deal with recipient lists in electronic messages is an issue
:      that has become more complicated with the growing use of e-mail.
:
:      For those who use e-mail to communicate with groups of friends or
:      business contacts, the question is one of the appropriateness of
:      revealing or of hiding all of the recipients' e-mail addresses.
:      Stories like Mr. Grey's suggest that increasingly, the latter
:      option is gaining momentum.
:
:      To hide the addresses in most e-mail programs, users type all of
:      the them into the Bcc, or blind Cc, field, instead of the To or
Cc
:      areas. In business-related messages to a colleague, the blind Cc
:      option is often used to send copies to other individuals without
:      the colleague's knowledge.
:
:      For that reason, using Bcc can be devious in the workplace. But
:      anecdotal evidence suggests that the Bcc feature is gaining
:      popularity for personal correspondence sent to a large group of
:      people, especially among those who have had their Cc lists reused
:      without their consent.
:
:      Joy Tadaki, a banker in London, said she has been more careful
:      about group messages since an incident last year when a colleague
:      from business school used the e-mail addresses from a message Ms.
:      Tadaki had sent informing friends about her new address. In this
:      case, the purpose of the message was more commercial than social:
:      the colleague sent Ms. Tadaki's list a message advertising a
couch
:      for sale in London.
:
:      "It was a bit annoying for a lot of people," Ms. Tadaki said,
:      particularly since she has lived in various countries and her
:      e-mail list included friends in the United States, Singapore and
:      Japan -- it was not a list of people who were likely to buy a
couch
:      in England.
:
:      Like Mr. Grey, Ms. Tadaki said having her e-mail list borrowed
made
:      her rethink how she addresses messages to a large list. "Next
time
:      I send out a change of address, I will definitely do Bcc," she
:      said.
:
:      Even so, Ms. Tadaki said there were still cases when she would
use
:      the To field for group messages -- namely, an invitation to a
party
:      or some other social gathering. "It allows people to see who else
:      is coming or who is invited," she said.
:
:      And that issue, at least in terms of social correspondence, is
what
:      presents the "to Cc or to Bcc" dilemma. On one hand, privacy
:      concerns have increasingly made Internet users skittish about
:      sharing their e-mail addresses -- a view that in some cases
extends
:      to friends' addresses.
:
:      On the other hand, it can be a bit disturbing to receive a party
:      invitation via e-mail where the To field says "undisclosed
:      recipients" or "recipient list suppressed" -- phrases some e-mail
:      programs insert when all of the recipients have been blind Cc'd
on
:      a message.
:
:      Donna Booher, the marketing communications manager for
health-care
:      technology company in Silicon Valley, said she tries to balance
:      Internet etiquette with social etiquette when deciding how to
:      address group messages. To pass along information about a change
of
:      address, a new job or some other announcement, she said, she
:      generally uses the Bcc feature.
:
:      For party invitations, though, whether she Cc's or Bcc's the
:      addresses depends on the size of the event. "If it's a small
group
:      and I think people might want to carpool or something, then I
Cc,"
:      Ms. Booher said. "They know each other and they're not going to
:      spam each other." But when she is having a bigger party, Ms.
Booher
:      said she generally blind Cc's the entire list.
:
:      "There's no reason to give everybody your Cc list and have them
:      potentially use it for spam," she said.
:
:      Despite these precautions, Ms. Booher said an acquaintance once
:      asked her for her e-mail contact list to invite everybody on it
to
:      another event. Ms. Booher demurred. "I said, 'Why don't you just
:      bring flyers to my party and pass them out instead.' "
:      _________________________________________________________________
:
:    A feature that masks recipient lists for e-mail appears to be
growing
:    in popularity.
:      _________________________________________________________________
:
:      As for those who said they had used e-mail addresses gleaned from
:      friends' correspondence, most were reluctant to have their names
:      published, for fear of being electronically blacklisted.
:
:      But off the record, a former employee of an Internet company in
:      California admitted to forwarding a particularly lengthy list of
:      e-mail addresses to the company's sales group, noting that the
:      domain names of the addresses represented a "gold mine" of sales
:      leads at other Internet ventures.
:
:      Meanwhile, an aspiring New York theater director acknowledged a
:      habit of scanning the other e-mail addresses on group messages
from
:      friends in the business, on the off chance a networking
opportunity
:      might present itself.
:
:      Of course, contacts initiated via a serendipitous encounter with
a
:      list of e-mail addresses are not always considered unwelcome or
:      suspect. In some cases, a group e-mail can spark a new
relationship
:      or reconnect old friends.
:
:      Beth Niestat, a program coordinator in Boston for the Jewish
campus
:      organization Hillel, got back in touch with a friend from high
:      school when she recognized her name on a group e-mail message
from
:      a mutual friend. Ultimately, the correspondence sputtered out.
But
:      Ms. Niestat said she suspected most people shared her tendency to
:      peruse the other e-mail addresses listed on group messages.
:
:      In fact, she said her friend Katy Filner has gone one step
further
:      -- on occasion striking up random e-mail conversations with other
:      recipients of a message from an acquaintance, asking things like,
:      "I saw your name on Bob's e-mail list and wondered, how do you
know
:      him?"
:
:      "She figured, if this person is on Bob's list, he's one step
closer
:      than a stranger," Ms. Niestat said. "The thing about e-mail is
you
:      do things a little bit more capriciously."
:
:      Ms. Filner confirmed that she had indeed initiated e-mail
:      conversations in this rather offbeat manner, noting that a good
:      source of e-mail addresses were the joke messages people often
:      forward to friends -- in most cases, leaving all the previous
:      recipients' addresses visible in the headers.
:
:      "At the time, I was single and I thought, oh, I'll just look for
a
:      guy's name," Ms. Filner said. She said she sent messages to about
:      five people, at least one of whom wrote back saying, "Don't ever
:      write to me again." But one person responded more positively and
:      they ended up corresponding via e-mail for about a year.
:
:      Although she hasn't written to anyone found on a list lately, Ms.
:      Filner said she still scanned the other addresses listed on
e-mail
:      messages. "I think it's fun just to see if I know anyone," she
:      said.
:
:      As for her own policy about sharing friends' e-mail addresses,
Ms.
:      Filner said she always Bcc's large lists. "I never forward
people's
:      names because I know what people like me do," she said, laughing.
:
:      Which is why those who send e-mail messages to multiple
recipients
:      would do well to remember that once you hit the Send button, it's
:      out of your address book and out onto a very large, very public
:      network. In other words, Cc at your own risk.
:        ______________________________________________________________
:
:
:     Susan Stellin at [log in to unmask] welcomes your comments and
:     suggestions.
:        ______________________________________________________________
:      _________________________________________________________________
:
:
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