In computer news this week, 03/05/2003

Lead: Blind Carbon Copy wasn't an old country bluesman - or - Common mistakes people make on the internet .... and how to prevent them ....

The most common thing people do on the internet is send email. One of the amazing statistics I read about American Online awhile ago is that the majority of their 27 million users - just used the service for email, instant messaging or chat rooms- they never even went out and surfed the internet.

Receiving email is usually a fun experience, but there are a few rules to understand.When you get an email address, you then need to ask your friends what their email addresses are - there is no central internet post office where you can look this stuff up - and then you want to put them in some kind of an email address book so that you can send email to your friends without having to constantly retype their names in. Most ISP's provide an email program - the majority of them recommend that you use MS outlook, which is probably the industry standard program.

Others like Earthlink give you a choice of either using their own proprietary email program, or using Outlook or whatever.

Some like AOL require you to use their own proprietary email program, which is not compatible with Outlook, because AOL and Microsoft are archenemies.

Usually with any email program there are 3 ways of sending email, 2 of which are used and understood and one which is commonly not used and grossly misunderstood.

When you send email, you usually send the email direct to your friend, usually clicking on the To button in your email program.

If you want to send a copy of the same email to someone else, you can either click on To button and add that person to the main address of the email, or you can click on the CC Carbon Copy button and then their name will appear in the CC section of the email address. All parties who receive the email know all people that the email involved; their names and email addresses.

This usually works fine, but sometimes you might want to send an email to someone - and a copy of it to someone else - and you DON'T want the person you are primarily sending it to know that you copied someone else in on the email. In this case you need to send the copy of the email as a BCC - Blind carbon copy - and Outlook and most programs have this feature, although sometimes it is turned off by default and you may have to tinker with turning it on.

But the primary reason for using the Blind carbon copy function is to prevent people from gaining access to your mailing lists. Suppose you have a list of customers you want to notify of a sale or an event you're having. If you send the email using the To or the CC function, anyone receiving your email will be able to see and perhaps steal your mailing list. Plus they see in the address that you sent this to a whole lot of people, so it seems less personalized.

Whereas if you use the Blind carbon copy function - for the same mail list - everyone receives their own copy - it seems more personalized - and they don't know who else you sent it to.

So remember - Blind Lemon Jefferson was a great country bluesman and you should listen to his recordings, and Blind Carbon Copy is part of your email program and you should understand and use this function.

For Raw Bytes, This is Frank Delaney

POB 222 Spangle, Wa 99031 (509)245-3736 624-7230