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In some cases, the use of blind carbon copy may be viewed as mildly unethical. The original addressee of the mail (To: address) is left under the impression that communication is proceeding between the known parties, and is knowingly kept unaware of others participating in the primary communication.
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To tighten the focus of an existing email correspondence. By "moving people to BCC," a sender can remove non-essential parties from the recipient list so that future reply-all's will not include them. It is customary to include a parenthetical note indicating that certain recipients have been moved
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Depending on the particular email software used, the recipient may or may not know that the message has been sent via Bcc. In some cases, 'undisclosed recipients' placed in the To: line (by the software) shows that Bcc has been used. In other cases, the message appears identical to one sent to a
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Bcc: Blind carbon copy to tertiary recipients who receive the message. The primary and secondary recipients cannot see the tertiary recipients. Depending on email software, the tertiary recipients may only see their own email address in Bcc, or they may see the email addresses of all primary and
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To send a message to multiple parties with none of them knowing the other recipients. This can be accomplished by addressing a message to oneself (or, in some email clients, leaving the To: field empty) and filling in the actual intended recipients in the Bcc:
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A related risk is that by (unintentional) use of "reply to all" functionality by someone on Bcc, the original addressee is (inadvertently) made aware of this participation. For this reason, it is in some cases better to separately forward the original e-mail.
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To send a copy of one's correspondence to a third party (for example, a colleague) when one does not want to let the recipient know that this is being done (or when one does not want the recipient to know the third party's
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and not the original meaning; the historic RFC 733 has an explicit "blind carbon" annotation in its definition of the Bcc: header field syntax. "Cc:" and "Bcc:" mean "carbon copy" and "blind carbon copy" respectively.
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In some circumstances, the typist creating a paper correspondence must ensure that multiple recipients of such a document do not see the names of other recipients. To achieve this, the typist can:
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Bcc is often used to prevent an accidental "Reply All" from sending a reply intended for only the originator of the message to the entire recipient list. Using Bcc can prevent an
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It is common practice to use the Bcc: field when addressing a very long list of recipients, or a list of recipients who should not (necessarily) know each other, e.g. in
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to BCC. This can be done out of courtesy to uninterested parties, or as a way of politely cutting off non-essential parties from the thread going forward.
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single addressee. The recipient does not necessarily see the email address (and real name, if any) originally placed in the To: line.
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by avoiding the accumulation of block-list e-mail addresses available to all Bcc: recipients, which often occurs in the form of
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Set the ribbon not to strike the paper, which leaves names off the top copy (but may leave letter impressions on the paper).
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Boodhoo, Niala; Carey, Bridget (2009-08-25). "Be careful when you 'reply all' to e-mail". Miami Herald. pp. C8.
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With email, recipients of a message are specified using addresses in any of these three fields:
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a meaningful substitute for the names can be placed in the body of the message, e.g. '', or ''.
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372:(West Virginia, USA). 1998-01-18. page P5B. NewsBank record number 100F35638A890441.
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When it is useful for the recipients to know who else has received a Bcc message,
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NewsBank record number 200908250100KNRIDDERFLMIAMIH_poked-08-25-09.
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Husted, Bill. "Bad e-mail habits can be bothersome, embarrassing".
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address, assuming the other recipient is in the To: or Cc: fields).
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Crocker, D.; Vittal, J.; Pogran, K. T.; Henderson, D. A. (1977).
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secondary recipients but will not see other tertiary recipients.
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The interpretation of "Bcc:" as "blind courtesy copy" is a
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Stout, Chris. "DEAR NERD: Blind carbons hide addresses."
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There are a number of reasons for using this feature:
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to secondary recipients—other interested parties
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Add the names in a second step to each copy, without
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