Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.