Can you see me now?
“This message was sent to janedoe@megamailcorp.com, so why did I get a copy? Am I getting someone else’s e-mail?”
We often get this question. The answer is pretty simple really. The answer is that your e-mail address was listed in the BCC or Blind Carbon Copy section of the original e-mail message.
Blind Carbon Copy
When addressing an e-mail message there are several important parts:
- TO: This is the primary means of addressing a message. If your message has only 1 recipient, you put their e-mail address here.
- CC: This stands for carbon copy. Any e-mail addresses you type here will receive your message along with the person in the TO: line. The names & e-mail addresses that you enter in CC, will be visible to every one who receives the message
- BCC: This stands for blind carbon copy. This means that it works the same as CC in the sense that any e-mail address you put on the BCC line will receive the message. The major difference is that no one will see the e-mail addresses that were originally put there.
For a real life example of what I am talking about:
I create a message. In the “TO”, I put my friends e-mail address. I leave the “CC” completely blank. But in the BCC field I put my wife’s e-mail address. She would receive the message I sent. To her, it would only show my friends e-mail address as the only recipient of the message, even though she received a copy.
Summary
Although at first, BCC can be rather confusing but is actually quite useful. If I need to send 500+ e-mails and I put all the addresses in the TO section, every recipient would see who else got the message. By using BCC you can protect people’s privacy. A business for example, may not want all of its clients to know each other’s e-mail address for a variety of reason. A wonderfully bad example of what not to do was recently sent to us from a sales person (won’t mention the company). This person had put nearly 1000 e-mail addresses in the TO section. Meaning all of the 1000+ recipients saw everyone else’s e-mail. That wasn’t very professional 
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