The Lazy Designer

E-mail Etiquette the CC vs BCC

So the other day I received an e-mail from an editor, the contents of which are unimportant. But what is important is that the editor did a carbon copy of the email to dozens of other authors (using the cc field).

So?

The problem with this is that I now have the e-mail addresses for a bunch of writers, some of which, like myself, use a private e-mail address for professional correspondence. Now, its not the worse thing in the world for some other writers to get access to these addresses, but it was still a breach of each writer’s privacy.

I’ve seen the same thing happen back when I dayjobbed — an email is forwarded but includes e-mail information about senior company members to a third party, releasing what might be sensitive contact information outside the company.

Terrible! How can this be avoided?

Most e-mail programs include a BCC field (blind carbon copy) — though on some its a hidden field that you have to do funky voodoo to reveal. When you use it, the e-mail addresses are hidden from the other recipients.

And yes, I shouldn’t have had to post about it because ‘everyone knows this’, but I get at least one e-mail like this a month still.


Former lead designer at BioWare (Dragon Age: Origins, Neverwinter Nights). Creator of Raiders of the Serpent Sea.

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