You want to send a message to 24 different people.  What do you do?  If you are like most newbies, you enter each person’s e-mail address into the “To” field and let ‘er rip.

The problem?  Not only have you exposed the e-mail address and potential identity of all 24 people to each other, you may have also exposed them to automatic e-mail harvesting technology and thereby increased spam.

To top it off, if you’ve asked for a reply and one of your peeps hits  “Reply All”  by accident – such reply will be sent to all 23 other recipients + you.  Not such a big deal when the reply is “I’ll be there” but if your peep responds with personal details or any information not meant for the group, a potentially embarrassing situation could ensue.

So how do you send out a group e-mail the right way? It’s easy!

You place your own e-mail address in the “To” field and you place the 24 recipients into the “Bcc” field (Outlook 2007 users click on “Options” and “Show BCC”).  FYI, BCC means “blind carbon copy”.

By placing the recipients in the BCC field – not only can they not see each other, but any replies (including “Reply All”) will be sent only to you.  This also means you will receive a copy and be able to check if travelling through the net caused any issues with your formatting or message – which can sometimes happen.

Don’t chance exposing your friends and contacts.  Use the BCC function when mailing a message to a group.