One Easy Way To Stop Spam

by Steve Dasseos on December 12, 2008

I’ve used email for 14 years and my biggest email pet peeve is the lazy, careless and indiscriminate use of both the “To:” and “CC:” fields to send emails to multiple people. The one easy way to stop spam is to use the “Bcc:” address field when you send the same email to multiple recipients.

I’ve received (as I’m sure you have also) many “cute” or “urban legend” warnings where the senders have put my email addess and scores of other peoples’ email addresses in the “To:” and “CC:” fields. I assume these people are email novices. And I usually write them a kind note gently explaining the difference between the different address fields:

  • “To:” – Just one email address belongs here. When I email the same message to multiple recipients, I put my own email address here.
  • “CC:” – Put the email addresses of people who specifically need to know who else you are sending this email to and who may need to contact each other
  • “BCC:” – This is where you put the email addresses of people who do not need to know who else you are sending this email to. Also, put any email address here to protect their email address from Spambots harvesting their email address to send them even more Spam

I usually don’t have the same patience for businesses who foolishly use “To:” and “CC:” fields to send emails to multiple people. I rarely contact the business since I’m sure it would fall on deaf ears.

I recently got an email from Nationwide Insurance Company advertising their “Identity Theft Coverage”. Not only did I get this email, but 392 other people got this same email. How do I know 392 other people got this same email? Because their email adresses were in the “To:” field. I won’t be doing anything nefarious with their email adresses. However, I won’t be buying Nationwide’s “Identity Theft Coverage”!

In case you missed it above, here’s the “One Easy Way To Stop Spam”:

When you send the same email to multiple recipients, use the “Bcc:” address field. “Bcc:” means Blind Carbon Copy – putting the recipients email addresses here hides them from each other and prevents Spambots from harvesting the email addresses to send even more Spam.

I hope this makes sense. If you want the right travel insurance advice, call us at 1-888-407-3854 and we'll help you figure it all out.

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