What is bcc?

Email is one of the best ways of online professional communication. It can be used as the preferred mode of communication for sharing business-related information with complete security. The reason for using email so widely is due to it is simple, secure, and straightforward. But in every communication, some rules & etiquettes are being used, which ensure the proper communication between the sender and receiver. One of these email communication rules involves the use of bcc. In this topic, we will learn each detail about bcc and how it is used in email.

What is bcc in email?

BCC stands for Blind Carbon Copy, it allows to send a copy of the email to other people, and those emails ids or id will not be visible to the main recipient.

When we compose an email, it provides us with three options for the recipient's email addresses. These options are To, Cc, and Bcc.

• To: This option is used to put the main recipient's email address to whom we want to send the email. It is also known as a primary recipient or main recipient.
• Cc: If we want to send an email to more than one person, this option can be used. This option creates a copy of the email and sends the same mail to other people also, and both the main recipient & Cc's recipient can see the list of each other's email addresses also.
• BCC: It is similar to Cc as it also creates a carbon copy of the main email and sent to other people, but in this case, neither the main recipient nor the bcc's recipient can see the other's email addresses.

Since no one sees the list of the recipient addresses, hence it is called the Blind Carbon copy. It is a useful way to send the email address to other people without informing the main recipient.

Instead of copying the same email and sending it to different people, we can use bcc, as it will save time. It provides secure communication as it prevents other people from capturing the other's email addresses that they may use for spamming purpose.

Note: Use the Bcc option only if you do not want to reveal the email address of other recipients, but if each recipient needs to know that to whom you are sending an email, then use Cc instead of Bcc.

When to use CC in email?

If we can add multiple participants in the "To" field, and it works similar to Cc, then what is the use of CC in email.

The answer is that email etiquettes consider using Cc for sending emails to multiple recipients. As in professional communication, the "To" field is fixed for the main recipient, and other parties can be included using the "Cc" field.

When to use BCC in email?

We can use Bcc for the following reasons:

• When we don't want to inform the primary recipient.
  The bcc should be used when we want to send an email to third parties without informing the main recipient. It can be understood with the example of office. If someone has some issues with another employee, he can send the email to him by putting HR and Team-leader in bcc so that they can also see the communication.
• Sending an email to a large number of anonymous recipients.
  BCC can be useful for a case when we send an email to a large number of users who are unknown to each other. The email will seem like it is sent specifically to them. It also looks like a clean email, as it does not include a large number of email addresses list.

Advantages of BCC

• It is used to prevent the accidental "Reply all" by the main recipient. It means suppose the primary recipient wants to send the reply to the sender, and he accidentally sends it to all other recipients by clicking on the "Reply all" option. But if we put other people in bcc, we can prevent such incidents.
• By using bcc, we can prevent the spread of computer viruses, spam, and malware.
• It is helpful to send the same email to a different recipient without letting them know each other's email address.
• It allows us to involve anonymous third parties as per requirement.

Disadvantages of BCC

Using the BCC feature of email can be sometimes unethical and have several disadvantages. These disadvantages are:

• The bcc recipients would not be able to tell that they have addressed via bcc for the same email.
• A bcc recipient can communicate at any time by replying using the "Reply to All" option and can reveal their presence as a secret participant.
• The use of bcc can be considered as a breach of trust for the addresses which are not informed to other recipients.
• The use of the bcc feature is not considerable for transparent communication.

Difference between CC and BCC