When we send an email we see, in most email clients, that at the top of it we can write who it is addressed to with a “To…” in addition to the subject. But also all emails allow us to add “BCC”. What is this? What does BCC mean in an email? We explain below what it is for or what differentiates it from the main recipient when we are going to send an email.
Regardless of the service you choose (whether it’s Outlook or Gmail or any other) the vast majority of clients offer us the possibility of touching the “BCC” button, although you may also see the label such as BBC (blind carbon copy) and both will allow us the same.
What is CCO? How is it different from CC?
BCC stands for blind carbon copy. As we have seen in the previous paragraph, the BBC translation or blind carbon copy. It is an option that we can activate to send copies of an email to other recipients in addition to the main recipients. We managed to send a “hidden” or private copy. What does this mean? That the recipients you add in Bcc will not see the other blind carbon copy recipients but neither will the main recipients know that you have blind carbon copied to a third person. Nobody will know who else you send it to, except you.
There are other fields in mail, as we see in Gmail. The first is “to” and is where we add the person or people you want to send the email to. This information is public and we can add different recipients and everyone will know who that message was addressed to, they will see the other emails and addresses.
Next to CCO we can also see “CC” or carbon copy. As its name suggests, it is a copy of it but it is not hidden. We can send a copy of the body of the message or mail to other people, although they will know that it has been sent to them. The users put in a copy will be able to see which are the rest of the users put in a copy, in case there are more.
When to use BCC?
Why should we use BCC? It is simple, there are many cases in which we must send the same email to many people who do not know each other and we do not want to inform the rest of all the personal data or emails (we would also be breaching the Data Protection Law or LOPD) and we can do it in a single shipment adding all addresses from CCO. For example, the necessary notifications to your community of neighbors or communications to parents of students.
It is important to bear in mind that the incorrect use of email can be considered a minor infraction if we violate the Law on Data Protection and Guarantee of Digital Rights (LOPDGDD) but the sanctions could reach up to 60,000 euros, so it is essential that we have Take this into account when sending mass emails.
How to send BCC in an email
The method will depend on each service or client that we use, but they all allow it with a box, a button or a box that we must fill in.
In the case of Gmail, for example, we simply have to go to the “Compose2” button in the upper left corner of the screen. Once here, we go to the top of “new message” and we will see that in the “To…” row there are two symbols on the right: Cc and BCC. Just tap on BCC and a new row will open where you can put the hidden recipients.
In the case of using Outlook, we simply have to tap on “New message” and the steps will be the same: in the “To” row we will find, on the right, two buttons to add CC and BCC. Once we click on it, a new row will open under “To” and we will enter the hidden recipients.
