When Blind copy of email is always safe?

We will always want to share interesting Emails with our friends. We successfully complete this mission by just clicking the forward button in our E-mail interface and filling up email addresses of our friends in the "To" address box or "CC" address box.

This method would serve the purpose. But is it a safe way for forwarding emails?

For any novice internet user this method may be sounding good. But basically it is a not safe way of forwarding mails.

 

Significance of TO, CC and BCC:

The "To" address box is of course the text field where you have to enter the email address to which you want the mail to be sent. Multiple email addresses can be entered in this field for one to many delivery.

CC:

The "CC" stands for the term Carbon Copy. This is similar to writing a letter to somebody and mark a copy of the same to others.

When to use CC:

We have to note here that the recipients who are the owners of email addresses you entered in the TO address box as well as "CC" address will come to know about the other recipients to whom the email was sent. So you have to use "CC" address box prudently in the cases where you should ensure that all recipients should know the email details of other recipients to whom the mail is sent. To put is simply, the email message received by the recipients whose email addresses are entered in the "CC" address box will contain the email address of the sender as well as the email addresses of other recipients.

BCC:

The "BCC" stands for Blind Carbon Copy. If you enter the email address of the recipient/recipients here, they will not come know about other recipients to whom this mail was sent, the ultimate email message would contain only the sender's email and other contents of the email. The email addresses of other recipients will not be figuring in the mail.

When to use BCC:

While you are in compulsion that the recipients should know the email addresses of the other recipients you have to use CC. In all other situations it is better to use BCC because it's safe way of handling email harvesters

What is email harvesting:

It refers to manual or automated way of collecting email addresses by bulk email senders for sending spam (unwanted/unsolicited emails to advertise/propagate something-especially illicit products, obscene contents etc), virus programs to harm the computers.

Email harvesters normally tend to make automated programs to harvest mail addresses from the web.

But for an email harvester, receipt of mails that are sent using CC address boxes will be like giving bank locker keys to a robber.

A typical email received by a recipient whose email address was entered by sender in the CC address box:

From: abc@gmail.com

To: bcd@gmail.com

CC: 123@yahoo.co.in, 234@gmail.com, 456@yahoo.com, 765@yahoo.com, xyz@rediff.com

I find this mail very interesting and thought of forwarding this to you……….

It will be a cake walk as he will add more email addresses to his kitty without any difficulty so that he can send spam to more persons and harm more computers.

But when BCC address box used the recipient will receive only the sender's email address apart from the content.

A typical email received by BCC recipient:

From: abc@gmail.com

To: bcd@gmail.com

I find this mail very interesting and thought of forwarding this to you……….

So, if we use TO CC and BCC address boxes prudently by understanding the functional difference between them, it  will be great help that we do to our friends and their friends by safeguarding them from spam, virus threat etc.