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The Death of BCC
An anonymous reader writes "An interesting op-ed at NeoSmart discusses the demise of BCC in emails at the hands of Facebook and the like. It discusses how certain technologies that are slowly being supplanted by 'cooler' yet less effective alternatives have actually been spoiled for all, since they rely on a basic community-wide awareness regarding these technologies for them to work."
The crux of his point isn't that people don't know how to use BCC, although that's part of the problem. His point is that even for those who do know how to use BCC, recipients don't know what BCC means.
Here's a typical example of things I've had happen. Someone sends me a misguided nastygram at work over something that I have no control over. I reply to them basically saying, "I can't do anything about this, you need to contact x." Also, because I know they've been dog-cussing me over it to their boss, who is good buddies with my boss, I BCC his boss so that I can 1) let him know that the stuff he's hearing is unjustified, while simultaneously 2) trying not to agitate someone who's already bothered by looking like I'm needlessly escalating something to his boss.
Unfortunately, his boss is also a dipweed, and next thing I know, he's done a "Reply All" and said something like, "Hey, make sure you call x today, because we need this up and working for close of business."
Now, not only does the person know I sent the e-mail to his boss, but he knows that I did it surreptitiously, and he's even more pissed off than if I'd just CCed his boss on it so that he would know.
Having said that, I do wish that people would learn how to use BCC. Here's another typical scenario we have happen now and then:
Someone sends out some dumb little, "Hey everyone, we're having a party in the marketing group tomorrow, so bring in some food!" Unfortunately, they make two mistakes: 1) They accidentally send it to the entire company, including offices in Europe, Asia, Africa, etc., and 2) they address it in the To: or Cc: field instead of Bcc:. Next thing I know, I'm being inundated with, "PLEASE TAKE ME OFF YOUR DISTRIBUTION LIST!!!11!11!!" e-mails. And then after that come the inevitable deluge of, "PLEASE STOP REPLYING TO ALL!!!11!11!!" e-mails. The first one isn't so bad, but then there's this global e-mail flame war that breaks out between the people saying they want to stop getting e-mails and the people who are fussing about the people who want to stop getting e-mails. Sometimes it even descends down to a third, people fussing about people fussing about people who don't want to get e-mails, level.
I never cease to be amazed by how dumb people can be.
Strange, I see it used all the time - in the workplace, that is. For one thing, it's a very convenient way to "loop out" someone from a long-going email thread (when it's no longer relevant to them).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/
Table-ized A.I.
Bcc: is usually used for juicy emails. It's used a lot for CYA, and to keep certain people in the loop on touchy subjects. Whenever I get interesting emails I always check the to/cc fields to see who the players are, and who is involved. And if I'm not on there, you can bet I'm going to keep my trap shut until I need to say something.
Bcc: is alive and well; it appears that the author of TFA got burned by bcc'ing a clueless sot. You've got be careful on both ends...
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
It's useful when you're informing a large group of people that may not know eachother already about an event. For instance when sending out an invitation to a party.
It's just plain rude to share people's email address without their permission.
May we live long and die out
Saying BCC is dead because people use facebook is like saying SSH or FTP is dead, because my mom doesn't use either.
Have another read of his comment. He sent an email To: one person and Bcc: to that person's boss. The boss receives an email that does not have his email address anywhere in it. When the boss hits reply-all, the email will go to two people: the person who sent the email and the person to whom it was addressed. It was the boss who was in the Bcc field and hence when the boss hits reply, he doesn't send an email to himself.
There is no adding "everyone in by hand" because there are only two people who receive the boss's email and neither of them were in the Bcc field.
Sig matters not. Judge me by my sig, do you?
BCC doesnt show other recipients, so if your boss scenario actually happened, either you don't know how to use BCC yourself, or he added everyone in by hand.
I think it's you that doesn't understand how BCC works, the parent poster's scenario is quite possible (and has happened to me)
I send:
From: Johnny Five
To: Stupid Coworker
Bcc: Big Boss
Dude, Stop sending me porn, I don't want to see it.
My Stupid Coworker doesn't know I Bcc'ed the boss since he doesn't see the Bcc list, however, if the Boss does a reply-all, then stupid Coworker gets this email from him:
From: Big Boss
To: Stupid Coworker, Johnny Five
>Johnny Five wrote:
>
>Dude, Stop sending me porn, I don't want to see it.
Don't send porn to Johnny, send it to me instead.
Now Stupid Coworker knows that it was me that reported him for sending me porn.
BCC was dead ages ago because nobody hardly ever learned to use it. It was dead before Facebook. It was dead before the large influx of spam. It was dead about the time Gopher came out.
Ever get a "chain forwarded" email with hundreds of email addresses of people you don't know?
That's because nobody uses BCC. Nobody ever learns how to trim FW: lines either. FFS, nobody ever learns to reply in-line with quotes. Replies are all top posted, mostly because of that crawling horror called Lotus Notes and that other crawling horror Exchange. Nobody ever learns how to trim replies either - a one line top posted reply to 10 screens of text or multiple forwards? Sure!
The death of BCC is not because of Facebook. The death of useful email features is because most people are unwilling to learn, rude, or stupid.
--
BMO
SMTP doesn't know "BCC". SMTP knows "RCPT TO". The MUA knows "BCC" and "RCPT TO" both because it speaks SMTP and also knows the mail content format for TO, FROM, CC, and REPLY TO headers. BCC is an extra version of CC that adds more RCPT TO requests to the SMTP session but doesn't add a header like CC does.
Unfortunately, since so many implementors included the completely non-standard capability of multiple recipients in the "TO" field, CC itself is terribly underused itself.
So now you know... and knowing is half the battle.