Treat your customers' email addresses with respect

Today, I was forwarded an email that included all of the recipients' email addresses in the To field. This is such a big no-no in these days of spam that I thought I would blog about it to make sure, once again, that this practice ceases and to show WHY this should never be done by you.

The fact that this particular email came from a Government department should come as no surprise considering how lax the UK Govt has been with confidential data recently, and what we have all learnt about their lack of processes to protect data of any description. Worse still, this came from someone senior who advises Govt on Internet and Online Policy, and included email addresses which would be pretty hard to track down if you wanted to contact these people, so they are obviously not meant to be out in the "wild".

However dim this senior Advisor has been on a Friday afternoon, not sharing email addresses is basic netiquette, and should be one of the first things drummed in to any email user's head - whatever their position in life or reason to be emailing.

Open a new email message right now and look at the options you have for including people's email addresses. You should see:
To
CC
BCC

To is obvious. That is who your email is going to, and the recipient's email address will be shown in the 'headers'. There has to be an email address here or the email cannot be sent.
CC stands for 'carbon copy' and means that all recipients can see who else has received the email. Generally, but not always, email packages will only show the name rather than the email address.
BCC stands for Blind Carbon Copy and means that none of the recipients can see any of the other recipients details.

Now, imagine you are sending out an email to all of your customers. Which of the three choices would you use?

Do you want all of your customers knowing the contact details for every other customer? Would you want one of your competitors to get hold of the contact details for each of your customers? How would your customers feel if they saw their address listed openly like that?

The answer to all three of those questions should be a resounding No. I hope! So, it has to be the BCC field. In the To field, you would put your own email address as you don't mind every customer seeing that twice.

What you are doing by using the BCC field is not just protecting the identiy of your customers from unscrupulous use by ANYONE who got hold of a copy of that email. Nor just protecting your customers' identities from a competitor. You are also showing that the information your customers have given you, eg their email address in this instance, is being treated with respect, and not revealed to any third party, intentionally or otherwise.

Even if you are forwarding a message that has everyone's email addresses in, you should remove them before you hit forward. These awful chain letters which go round the Net are prime sources of email addresses for spammers, and once your email address is out there, who knows which databases you will end up on, nor how much drivel will end up in your inbox as a result.

So, when you are sending an email to more than one or two close friends or colleagues, ALWAYS USE THE BCC FIELD.