How to Use “CC” Properly

Don't violate the privacy of people in your contact list by sharing their e-mail addresses with everyone. What do I mean? Well, have you ever seen one of these:

Wow! Look at all those names!

The problem here is that everyone who receives this e-mail will also see everyone else's e-mail address and name. Why violate the privacy of your contacts this way? All that does is present a risk to you and them if anyone on the list is a spammer or scammer (or someone forwards this e-mail to one).

Put your own e-mail address in the "To:" field and take that giant list of people and put it in the blind carbon copy (BCC) field. Now when you send it, everyone will still get the e-mail, but the only address they will see is yours. And since they already know who you are, you're not giving away any private information to anyone.

You can still use CC if you wish, but only if you specifically intend for each person who receives the e-mail to know the other people who got the e-mail (for example, you send an e-mail to the tech support people and CC their supervisor so they know they will be called to task for their response).

Here's a great list I found online of all the major e-mail services and how to enable the BCC field if it isn't already.