Comments for How does using BCC help reduce spam?

Comment from Steven on 2010-12-28

2010-12-29T00:15:13Z

There is another problem that your suggestions seems to bring up. BCC can also be used to hide your address in such a manner that you'll get spam and never see your address in it?

Your explanation of BCC here is the first instance I've actually seen in 15 years that managed to possibly explain this to me.

Email may be a pain sometimes but I would think IM is 10X the pain. Since any protocol involves giving up control at some point to deliver data you are at the mercy of the network at all times I would suppose. The system was born open and people are used to getting their messages etc without a hassle and somebody will get what they want eventually. Perhaps if BCC were mandatory for all addresses beyond the first?

Still, when you get a spam email that has no trace of you in it it's probably worse to you than the other way around, highly bothersome and doesn't leave you feeling any better, as in, "how the blank..."?

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Comment from Doug Couch on 2010-11-05

2010-11-05T09:53:55Z

BCC is a great tool...but for the stuff yakked about in this article...Better yet! Stop sending all this junk around the Internet. Do you really really think this behavior means you're the friend of someone because you load up their chuckle box? It bogs down email servers, slows the Internet with extra traffic, and sometimes has inadvertently passed links to virus sites. If you or your friends need chuckles that bad, figure out how to be funny on your own. MOST of the seriously needed information sent around the net is garbage, untrue, and ridiculous. And the little that is true and worthwhile...if it's so worthwhile, bring it to the attention of an agency responsible in that area and see to it they publish it for people to see. CHECK THINGS OUT THOROUGHLY BEFORE YOU SEND ANYTHING AROUND! Just because you poked over to Snopes and see an approval flag does not necessarily mean you read the fine print there, or researched further. Many of the "true" ones are also BS or otherwise unworthy of your attention. (chuckle on that)
And btw...don't use Forward. Copy paste the message body into a new email, then call up your mailing list into the BCC field. If there is none, put each email address inside parentheses.

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Comment from michael clark on 2010-02-17

2010-02-17T12:48:59Z

Please use the full words when sending how to information like what is CC and BCC I don't have any idear what they mean please explane them.Thank you.

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Comment from Maria on 2010-02-16

2010-02-17T02:23:27Z

Many thank yous for this article. I seem to have a fair number of tech "challenged" friends & family. This forwarding of cutesy jokes, riddles, etc. always comes with the above mentioned CC problems. I try to get them to visualize crossing out the address on an envelope then remailing it to other recipients.

Anyhow, your explanation is much better. Oh, also to "Digital Artist" love the suggestion of BCC as the default setting.

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Comment from Digital Artist on 2010-02-16

2010-02-16T21:18:38Z

All the big email services (Gmail, Yahoo) claim to be opposed to spam, why don't they just make BCC the default setting and require personal attention when you want to send an open (visible) carbon copy?

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Comment from Claudia on 2010-02-14

2010-02-15T01:57:15Z

It would really help with the bcc. I use it all the time but deleting all the addresses are a pain as they have usually been sent to upteen people before I get to them.I still delete them before I send them on.I even sent explaining how to use bcc but it is easier just to send it. Thank you for addressing this subject

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Comment from lee wells on 2010-02-09

2010-02-09T19:42:25Z

YOU DON'T ADDRESS SBC OR ATT ISSUES, JUST HOT MAIL...HOW COME....ONE QUESTION I HAVE IS WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MAIL ICON IN AT&T...(SBC)THEY CHANGED IT SOMEHOW AND I CAN'T GET THE ICON BACK (??) YES, YOU ARE DEALING WITH A NONSAVVY COMP.USER...

THANK YOU..

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Comment from Bill Chubb on 2010-02-09

2010-02-09T18:37:34Z

For serious purposes, i.e. business, a proprietary e-mail program like MS Outlook is infinitely preferable to Outlook Express. The former also enables you to see to whom you blind copied so that you can easily keep track.

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Comment from Gail Roth on 2009-03-06

2009-03-06T12:07:17Z

Yes, Marion Sutton, it does work on AOL. I am on AOL and use BCC and it works. In the "Copy To:" section, type in all your recipients, putting them all together in parentheses. That is, put the open parentheses before the first e-mail address and the close parentheses after the last one. I use this method all the time.

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Comment from Gary Adsitt on 2009-02-20

2009-02-20T22:19:24Z

In windows live mail you can see who you sent it to by just looking in sent items and I leave the 'to' empty most of the time and they have always went where I sent them to none have been refused and all were answered when I requested them to be.

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Comment from Marion Sutton on 2009-02-13

2009-02-13T16:47:29Z

It doesn't seem to work this way if you use AOL..
I have told people how to send to Bcc, but if they have AOL, they can't do it!

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Comment from Fred on 2009-02-10

2009-02-11T06:59:34Z

@ Bernard Winchester,
Yes, its harder to mfind who you BCC'd, but its possible. (In Outlook Express)
Find the email in 'Sent Items'
Right-click->properties
Then click on the 'Details' tab. They are all there easy to find.

Always use BCC is you send to multiple people unless you want them to know you have sent it to each other.

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Comment from Bob Rutske on 2009-02-10

2009-02-11T02:57:01Z

Much easier way to do this. I just copy the the message and paste it in a new e mail with only the address's I want....to, CC or BCC

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Comment from David on 2009-02-10

2009-02-10T19:17:43Z

Great tip...just goes to show....you can learn somethin new everyday, no matter how much you think you know...lol Of course I never forward anything, it's like a petpeeve to me.

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Comment from Terry Baker on 2009-02-10

2009-02-10T17:11:30Z

While the BCC addresses are definitely not included in the copies of the message sent by your email provider to the BCC addressees, they appear to be included in the original message as it travels from you to your email provider; that would seem to be necessary so that your email provider knows where to send the copies. So a spammer could still harvest the BCC addresses if your email is intercepted on the way from you to your email provider, although not on its way from there to the recipients.

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Comment from Jake Smith on 2009-02-10

2009-02-10T17:05:18Z

Not only should you remove the lines that are nothing more than forwarded email headers, the message would be much more readable were you to remove all of the > symbols.

In outlook express if you click on Tools, then Options, then the Send tab, uncheck the box 'Indent message on Reply' for both HTML settings and Text settings.

If, however, you use web mail, some web mail programs do not allow you to make any changes to the message being forwarded but send them as attachments after adding the indents and headers. (One more reason to use an POP e-mail instead of web mail.)

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Comment from Bernard Winchester on 2009-02-10

2009-02-10T17:04:51Z

It's certainly the conventional wisdom these days that you should use BCC when sending to multiple recipients, but to play devil's advocate for a moment I'd like to point out that there are drawbacks. For instance, you sent several people an important e-mail, but can't remember whether you left certain addressees out. It's easy to reopen it in your sent folder and check, isn't it?

Not if you BCCed them! You won't see the blind copied recipients even in Outlook Express; I've tried, even using dodges found on the net which apparently worked in the past, but not now, at least on my system. So you'd better keep a list of those addressees somewhere else. Then I have to admit that there have been times when someone else has lifted my address from a list on a message, or I have found an acquaintance's in that way, and the resulting communications have been helpful. Everyone is so jealous of their privacy nowadays that finding people can be difficult, eg with most telephone numbers beung ex-directory. I am not convinced that the gains from this outweigh the losses.

I am also not convinced that spammers harvest their addresses in this way. It doesn't sound very practical. I have been sending and receiving e-mails with large numbers of addresses for years with no noticeable affect on my spam: I think the servers are quite good at filtering it now. So I think the question is arguable.

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Comment from joe thiel on 2009-02-10

2009-02-10T17:04:22Z

You are absolutely right about the collection of addresses that come with many forwarded mails,
but there is not even any need to fill in the To:line nor the CC line all addresses on the blind copy line will do,using Outlook Express.So no need even to send it to your self.
Joe

That's actually not true for all mail programs and all mail providers. Some will reject mail without a visible recipient, so it's just easier to send it to yourself. Also email without a visible recipient, when it does make it through, is more likely to be flagged as spam.

- Leo
11-Feb-2009

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Comment from jim lorenz on 2009-02-10

2009-02-10T16:29:49Z

i have been telling people this for years. i am going to forward this page to all those people today. your explanation is concise and to the point with easy to understand why and how to. thanks!

If you do it in one mailing, be sure to ... BCC them. :-)

- Leo
11-Feb-2009

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Comment from Greg Bulmash on 2009-02-08

2009-02-09T05:35:51Z

And if any e-mail says "forward this to everyone you know," don't.

BTW, sending chain mail is a violation of the terms of service of almost every ISP and web-mail service. If you get caught, you could lose your e-mail account.

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A comment on: How does using BCC help reduce spam?

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