[NA] BCC, how many of you use it, when, and why?

Tantalum

Tantalum

Final Approach
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San_Diego_Pilot
I've always wondered if there was a clean non-under-the-bus way of using BCC?

I think in my whole professional career I can count on one hand when I've used BCC, and it was usually only after being directed to do so by HR or a manager to retain a record of something

So why not just use CC or FWD the message?
 
Well when someone sends me a bcc email and I accidentally hit reply-all instead of reply-sender, I don't embarrass myself.
 
Never tried replying all to a BCC email, but wondered what would happen.

The only time I can legitimately think to use BCC is if you are sending out something to multiple unassociated people in your address book... like if the flying club wants to let it's members know that a plane will be down. Otherwise it seems there is no real need for it
 
I can see it being used in a professional setting if you were sending out an email to a group of vendors or clients.
 
I was an investor in a small privately held company. The owner put out a quarterly update to investors which included some challenges for the company, impacting the bottom line. He CC'd everyone, thus all on the list had access to everyone's email address. Some of the less tolerant investors decided a 'reply all' with hateful dissatisfaction was in order, which stirred up more discord, etc, etc. Some of them knew me to be more than educated on the issues at hand, which they made public to all, and then several folks emailed me directly.

I would have preferred not to deal with that on an individual level.

I educated the owner on the value of BCC.
 
A nice way of using BCC: is when you want reply and reply all to only come to you. When you're dealing with a group that constantly hits reply all you generate spam by using CC. You also share contacts details as mentioned previously, and that may not be nice.

The potentially negative way of using it is to send to a group of To and CC's with a BCC to a superior or watcher. (like that HR example) It's a bit sneaky so you better be right when you do it, because sometimes the clueless BCC person hits Reply All and BAM! Busted! (ask me how I know) But it gets the message across.
 
Ravioli said:
A nice way of using BCC: is when you want reply and reply all to only come to you. When you're dealing with a group that constantly hits reply all you generate spam by using CC. You also share contacts details as mentioned previously, and that may not be nice.

The potentially negative way of using it is to send to a group of To and CC's with a BCC to a superior or watcher. (like that HR example) It's a bit sneaky so you better be right when you do it, because sometimes the clueless BCC person hits Reply All and BAM! Busted! (ask me how I know) But it gets the message across.
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That's why I don't try to second guess it and leave it alone.
 
I use BCC all the time in my business. Often I need to send something to a client and copy sales or the technical services director, just to keep them in the loop, but it isn't really appropriate for the client to see that they were copied or if I want the appearance of the communication to be more one on one. I could forward it, but that is a couple of extra steps (go to sent items and forward the item). Also, as mentioned above, it is the polite and appropriate way to address a group email where the recipients do not know each other.
 
Besides the privacy issue, I use it fairly extensively when working with vendors. The boss gets a BCC so he has the history of a problematic vendor the next time they call him asking for a "reference" or a "review", and he just sticks them in folders per vendor.

I've kept him in the loop, and he doesn't have to come find me or worry about me getting hit by the proverbial bus during negotiations of new contracts, etc. He gets the BCC but knows he doesn't have to get involved, it's just backup data for him.

Of course we also have more formal ways to document vendor data and contacts in case of a true "hit by a bus" scenario, but this is more for the ongoing negotiations and things like that. We've had vendors play the "let's shop around that company for the friendliest decision-maker" game before when one of us was so angry at one of them, we could spit.

Came in real handy with one telecom vendor who was acting sleazy like that. Boss pulled up his folder when they called trying to pitch him something and also wanted to do the annual review, and gave them all bottom marks in every category along with a well worded blurb about why. And he hadn't talked to them in a year.

Guess who got the phone call from our account manager the next day freaking out that our top decision maker said he'd never give them another dollar? Sure lit a fire under their butts.

Unfortunately I know that vendor too well. It won't last more than a couple of weeks. They're culturally and programmatically inept when it comes to any sort of actual customer service.

But it sure is fun to have kept the EVP up to speed on it, when they're dumb enough to try to call him. :-)
 
Speaking of BCC, how you all feel about Read Receipts? I don't use them, and I go out of my way to not send them. I wish they didn't exist.
 
Ravioli said:
Speaking of BCC, how you all feel about Read Receipts? I don't use them, and I go out of my way to not send them. I wish they didn't exist.
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I find your hatred of read receipts mystifying. I think they're very useful for making sure that the recipient noticed and read a particular piece of mail that was actually important among all the other crap in their inbox. I can tell whether they received it easily enough without their help using a DSN or by looking at the SMTP logs. I want to know whether they actually noticed and read it.

I only send read receipt requests when I am sending something that affect's someone else's income, or when the recipients need to do something by a certain time to avoid bad consequences to themselves or their businesses. In neither case is there anything sinister going on. I just want to make sure that the recipient received and read the message because it required some sort of action.

For example, I have a client who pays his employees whenever a picture or video file they send me is used on his company site. Because the employees send the files directly to me and I only use about 10 percent of them, the client doesn't even know the files were sent, much less whether they were used. So I send the client an email with a read receipt request every Wednesday morning to make sure that he has the information in time for the payroll.

Another time that I use read requests is when clients' domain names are about to expire and they haven't renewed them. Unless I hold the domain or am at least listed as something on the WHOIS record for a domain, I usually can't pay to renew a domain on behalf of a client. A very few registrars still allow it, but most don't. So I send an email to the client 14 days before their domain expires to let them know they need to renew it. If I don't get a receipt, I call them.

As for BCC, I don't use it much. My invoicing software sends me BCCs of every invoice and payment, but that's about it.

Rich
 
No mystery. They are an annoyance.

I had a client who used read receipts on every email she sent. After about a month she asked if I had been getting her emails because she hadn't been getting read receipts. I told her I don't ever send them but I do read your emails. Then I said "which one would you like to discuss?" Crickets.

They are often used as some form of gotcha or case builder.

It's right down there with the annoyance of marking too many things "Important." yah, if you took time to type it and send it to me and half of the free world I assume there is some importance there.

And the confusion of To: vs CC: C'mon if you're on the To line I need a reply. If you're CC'd I don't. And if you're on the CC and you're a reply all freak it better be something a whole lot more meaningful than "Thanks" or "I agree" because I don't give a rip if someone I CC agrees or not. Insert my hatred of read receipts here! I've gotten the requests from worthless replies from CC's. Really important for them to know that I read that they said thanks.

Not every email needs a response. Just as not every ringing phone needs to be answered.
 
Ravioli said:
Speaking of BCC, how you all feel about Read Receipts? I don't use them, and I go out of my way to not send them. I wish they didn't exist.
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When I get a message that the email sender requested a Read Receipt I always hit Deny. I think they are rude. I read all of my emails, these people know I read all my emails... if I'm not responding, it's because they or what they are requesting are not my priority right now. Trying to force my hand to acknowledge them doesn't change that.
 
Ravioli said:
No mystery. They are an annoyance.

I had a client who used read receipts on every email she sent. After about a month she asked if I had been getting her emails because she hadn't been getting read receipts. I told her I don't ever send them but I do read your emails. Then I said "which one would you like to discuss?" Crickets.

They are often used as some form of gotcha or case builder.

It's right down there with the annoyance of marking too many things "Important." yah, if you took time to type it and send it to me and half of the free world I assume there is some importance there.

And the confusion of To: vs CC: C'mon if you're on the To line I need a reply. If you're CC'd I don't. And if you're on the CC and you're a reply all freak it better be something a whole lot more meaningful than "Thanks" or "I agree" because I don't give a rip if someone I CC agrees or not. Insert my hatred of read receipts here! I've gotten the requests from worthless replies from CC's. Really important for them to know that I read that they said thanks.

Not every email needs a response. Just as not every ringing phone needs to be answered.
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There are different degrees of importance. If an email I send requires some action on a client's part, and that action is time-dependent (such as meeting a payroll deadline or renewing a domain), I want to know that they read the mail. By not responding, they're forcing me to call them, which is even more of an inconvenience than simply sending the receipt.

Another time I want receipts is when one of my client's accounts is spewing forth spam. Usually this means that one of the computers on their LAN is infected. I send an email with a RRR to the client (or to another user on the client's domain if it's the client's own account that was compromised) telling them to shut down the compromised computer and call someone to disinfect it. If they don't respond pretty much immediately, I call them. If they don't answer their phone, their outgoing mail service gets shut down.

I've had to do this several times when the clients actually had read the mail and were taking the appropriate actions. But because they never bothered to acknowledge my mails or answer their phones, I had no way of knowing that other than by sitting and watching their outgoing mail activity. That would be a hell of a lot more of an inconvenience for me than clicking the "SEND RECEIPT" button would have been for them.

I agree that people who want every one of their messages acknowledged are obnoxious. I have a few of them, too. I just factor the "annoyance factor" into their renewal rates. But having a blanket policy of denying read receipt requests for messages that actually do have some element of urgency just winds up annoying the sender and wasting their time. I factor that sort of thing into renewal rates, as well.

Rich
 
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I use BCC in client support emails when I want to include some folks from the development team but don't want our customers to have their email. Could just forward separately, but this preserves the thread and saves me a click or two.
 
RJM62 said:
I agree that people who want every one of their messages acknowledged are obnoxious. I have a few of them, too.
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I think we can agree that while there are good uses of the tool, my experience is that they are rarely the reason people use them.
 
Ravioli said:
Speaking of BCC, how you all feel about Read Receipts? I don't use them, and I go out of my way to not send them. I wish they didn't exist.
Click to expand...

Despise read receipts and always decline sending them and can count on one hand the number of times I have used them, I limit it to internal group mailboxes that don't have a listed owner so if I need to escalate something I know who to go to. Agree with the uses of BCC for large dsitributions.

Pet Peeve is people who send emails and cc themselves...double hate for people who cc themselves and request a read receipt.
 
BCC was originally supposed to be called BCYA.
Unfortunately, the Political Correctness Police changed it to BCC.
That being said it's primary function is still to cover your axx when dealing with stupid and or shady people.
 
BCC: I use it whenever I want to keep someone in the loop, but not make an issue of it.

Read Receipt: Too much abuse. I set my software to ignore them. Now I have no way of know if one was requested or not.

Priority: Another item that tends to get abused. I wrote a rule that sets the priority to "Lowest" for any email hitting my inbox.

Next order of business: Need to figure how to stop .ics attachements from automatically updating my calendar.
 
Ravioli said:
Speaking of BCC, how you all feel about Read Receipts? I don't use them, and I go out of my way to not send them. I wish they didn't exist.
Click to expand...

Never send them, and make sure they're always completely turned off on every client I've ever used, the second the new machine or client is loaded.

Email is store and forward. I may not read it today. Want to make sure I got a message? I have three phone numbers that ring me 24/7.

At least one of them is on the bottom of every business email I've ever sent you.

If you have some stupid personal hang up about dialing a phone number, it must not be that important. Good luck.

Been essentially "on-call" for over two decades. The phone is for urgency. The email is for later.

The chat system, I manage it so it alerts and I notice a few very important (company will lose money) things and other than that, I see them when I see them.

If nobody is bleeding on the floor or we're not losing money by the minute, it's not an emergency.

One of my bosses said it best a long time ago, "We didn't hire him for his stellar personality." He said this to a pro "troubleshooting" trainer who posed a scenario to a group class we were both in, and I kinda ruined her scenario by figuring it out too soon.

It was one of those implausible scenarios where the instructor lets each person ask one question. I was seated so I was question number three.

Oh. And the answer was "the matador stabbed himself". LOL.

We made that poor trainer's life hell for a week. I still remember the nearly 60 year old telecom engineer in our support group yelling at her that "machines don't work that way!" to one of the stupid scenarios presented.

Ahhh... what was the name of that crap again? Oh yeah, these ass-hats...

http://www.kepner-tregoe.com

I see they still can't build a decent mobile website for all their BS about good processes and procedures, either. LOL.
 
All entertaining forwards after scrubbing any other contact info. Avoids spreading spam tremendously in the big picture. Learned from superb IT guys.
 
Tantalum said:
Never tried replying all to a BCC email, but wondered what would happen.

The only time I can legitimately think to use BCC is if you are sending out something to multiple unassociated people in your address book... like if the flying club wants to let it's members know that a plane will be down. Otherwise it seems there is no real need for it
Click to expand...
If you're the one who was bcc'd, it goes to everyone else and your cover is blown. My previous employer used a plug-in that would give you the option of converting bcc's to separate copies of the email. For the bcc'd addresses, it would put them into a separate email with a a line at the top that said in bold, "You were BCC'd" and then it listed the original recipients. No potential reply all problems.
 
Lindberg said:
If you're the one who was bcc'd, it goes to everyone else and your cover is blown. My previous employer used a plug-in that would give you the option of converting bcc's to separate copies of the email. For the bcc'd addresses, it would put them into a separate email with a a line at the top that said in bold, "You were BCC'd" and then it listed the original recipients. No potential reply all problems.
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BCC is never supposed to show the recipient list to the other recipients. If it does, it's broken. That client or server is completely broken. There should be zero need for that plug-in.
 
denverpilot said:
BCC is never supposed to show the recipient list to the other recipients. If it does, it's broken. That client or server is completely broken. There should be zero need for that plug-in.
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Huh? If you're BCC'd on an email, you can still see all the other recipients that aren't BCC'd on every email system I've ever used. The only recipients you won't see are others that we're blind chopped themselves. That's the source of the embarrassing "reply all" issue. If you couldn't see the other recipients, you wouldn't be able to reply all.
 
Lindberg said:
Huh? If you're BCC'd on an email, you can still see all the other recipients that aren't BCC'd on every email system I've ever used. The only recipients you won't see are others that we're blind chopped themselves. That's the source of the embarrassing "reply all" issue. If you couldn't see the other recipients, you wouldn't be able to reply all.
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I never really understood this stuff until I had to start doing it. But you are right.

Just a few weeks ago, I had to send an email out to ~50 or so people. I didn't want those 50 people to know each others identities, but I did want them to see that my higher ups had visual on the issue/email - so I cc-ed my higher ups and bcc-ed everyone else.

I have had some mildly awkward "reply all" people respond to those kind of emails, but thankfully never anything too bad. Usually amusing for everyone :)
 
Lindberg said:
Huh? If you're BCC'd on an email, you can still see all the other recipients that aren't BCC'd on every email system I've ever used. The only recipients you won't see are others that we're blind chopped themselves. That's the source of the embarrassing "reply all" issue. If you couldn't see the other recipients, you wouldn't be able to reply all.
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Ahh. The ones that aren't BCCd. I see what you're saying. Yes. Anything not in the BCC line is published on every copy.
 
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