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Perhaps you have received chain letters via e-mail and wondered where they come from or what harm they might do. After all, what harm can it do to send that little girl a letter if she is dying of cancer? The situations portrayed in these letters are generally "urban legends", which can spring up from a number of sources. It is amazing how fast they spread. For example, our own Discount Virus is obviously not for real yet is has been featured on Symantec's Anti-Virus site in their collection of "virus hoaxes". In the summer of 2000 I received several messages titled PLEEEEEEEEASE READ! - We'll see if it works. This letter claims to be from an attorney, it mentions several large companies, and it claims that one of these companies needs to have people send e-mail messages to test their e-mail system. The attorney then mentions another attorney by name, as if to lend a sense of credibility to the letter. Each copy of this letter that I received had been forwarded many times, leaving so many headers buried within the letter that it required quite a bit of scrolling to find that actual message. Many of these headers included the person's real name, employer, job title, phone number, fax number, and e-mail address. One style of header is simulated below, with (hopefully) bogus names.
As an exercise I took three of these letters and harvested over 200 e-mail addresses using nothing more sophisticated than the Notepad program that comes with Windows. The entire process took under 15 minutes. I sent a letter to all of these people, hiding their names as described below to protect their privacy, and fewer than 5% were returned as undeliverable. I deleted the list right after sending the letter but can you imagine the wealth of information the originator of this letter has received as people dutifully return copies of this letter to them?
Perhaps you don't care that George Jones' e-mail name is RetchingJackal33@AOL.Com but what if you are George Jones and you receive an e-mail message with your name on the To: line or subject line. Would you open it? You probably would. Perhaps it is advertising or, worse, perhaps it is a virus. Since this information can be sold for a profit without your consent you are bound to receive quite a few more messages. Yes, a chain letter really does work, but not the way you expected. So, is there a way to protect yourself and your message recipients when you send a letter to a number of people? I thought you would never ask (and you did ask, didn't you?) Yes there is and it is called BCC. In the days of typewriters a secretary preparing a letter would load letterhead plus sets of carbon paper and onionskin into the typewriter. Each recipient's name would be noted in the CC: block (Carbon Copy) at the bottom of the letter. Additional copies would be sent to managers, whose names would be noted on the file copy of the letter in the BCC: block (Blind Carbon Copy) but the recipients would not know they had received a copy. Most e-mail programs have a BCC: option to keep the names of the recipients private. Any name in the To: and CC: blocks will be available for all to see but names in the BCC: block will never be seen. Interestingly, the BCC: option is often turned off by default but it should be easy to activate. Check your Help screen and documentation for instructions.
Your e-mail screen should now look something like the one below. If you are sending mail to a number of people just put their names in the BCC: block. You should put your own name in the TO: block so your letter does not appear to be anonymous, i.e., "spam" or a virus. The only drawback to using BCC: is that when you read the letter in your "sent" file you will not know the names of the recipients. To overcome this, copy the contents of the BCC: block to the clipboard, edit the sent copy of the letter, and paste the names at the bottom.
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