Don't Brush Off Email Privacy | Business Email Etiquette

Do you show a blatant disregard for your contact’s privacy? How would you feel if your business contacts decided to take your phone number and give it out to strangers? Strangers who you don’t know! Strangers who may use your phone number to contact you about something you’re not interested in or worse yet, who may sell your phone number to telemarketing companies to do the same.

The same thing happens with e-mail addresses every single day. We’ve all had this happen to us and it’s not okay. Each day we receive messages or forwarded e-mail from well business contacts listing all those they are sending to in the To: or Cc: field. And by doing so they are visibly displaying their contact’s e-mail addresses to strangers!

If you do this and are thinking “no big deal” you are so wrong! Nor is it proper e-mail etiquette to expose 100s of addresses in the Cc: field as many have claimed to justify their improper actions. If you have more than 5 contacts, even if they do know each other, you should use the BCc: to keep your e-mail professional in appearance. Nothing smacks of inexperience like seeing long lists of e-mail addresses visibly displayed.

If the only thing all the folks you are sending to have in common is the information you are providing — and they have not met the others you are e-mailing personally — you have breached your contact’s privacy by publicizing their e-mail addresses to people they don’t know. Talk about showing a complete disregard for their privacy not to mention your lack of tech savvy!

Whenever you are sending to a group of business onliners, put your email address in the To: field and your list of addresses in the BCc: field and protect their email addresses from unnecessary exposure. I get inquires on a daily basis from folks who have been on the receiving end of such e-mail and there are two issues they ask me about:

How do I let this person know I don’t appreciate them publicizing my e-mail address to people I don’t know? What were they thinking!?
Is it O.K. to e-mail all the other people whose address is in the To: or Cc: field along with mine about my business or service?

So as you can see, your contacts not only do not appreciate their e-mail addresses being made public without their permission. If they ask you to not do so, respect that request and help to protect their privacy. It is not your decision to make as to who you expose others e-mail addresses to without their permission.

Even worse is that there are those that do assume they can then spam those addresses because they are visible! By not respecting your contact’s privacy you are in fact opening them up to additional unwanted e-mail.

Part of the problem is the BCc: is not easily visible in software programs. I use Eudora where the BCc: field is visible just waiting for you to put in e-mail addresses. However, for other software and Web based sites, here is what you do:

First, start a new message, then:

In Outlook, if BCc: isn’t showing, create a message, and from the View menu, click BCc: Field.
In Outlook Express, click View >All Headers.
In Netscape, click the TO: button, then double-click BCc:.
In AOL, put the BCc: addresses in the “Copy To” box, using parentheses and separating each address with a comma.
In Yahoo!, click Add BCc:.
In Gmail, click Add BCc:.
Bcc on Mac mail: Open a new email. In the bottom left of the title block is the Customize button. a menu opens, click on “BCc Address Field”. This will appear on all future emails.
Seamonkey: Click on the “To:” button and highlight “BCc”.

The BCc: feature should be used when e-mailing a group of business contacts who don’t know each other or have not met. Show you “get it” and respect your contact’s privacy! Wherever BCc: may hide, find it and use it!