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  • Correct Way to Send Out Group Emails

       

     

    November 12, 2007 · Print This Article

     

       

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    When you send out an email to a group of people, simply putting them all on the to field is bad form.  First, it exposes all the email addresses, so everyone can see everyone else’s emails.  Second, if someone accidentally hits “Reply All” instead of “Reply” their response can easily be sent to the entire group instead of just you.

     

    A few years ago, I got an email from a friend who was studying at Yale.  It was a yearly update about what was going on in his life.  He put everyone he knew in the To: field.  This included old classmates, current professors, relatives, etc.

     

    One of his friends got the message and decided to respond with an update of all the stuff going on in her life.  She accidentally hit the “Reply All” button and sent a bunch of personal details to a list of mostly complete strangers.

     

    There was another case awhile back where a real estate company sent out a message to a bunch of people looking for apartments in New York.  Everyone was listed in the To field which provided a very handy list that any recipient could quickly sell to a competitive real estate company.

     

    There is a simple way to prevent this.  Simply put yourself in the To field and everyone else in the BCC field.  That way both “Reply” and “Reply All” will only come back to you and recipients can’t see each other’s email addresses.

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