Faux pas, or just being difficult?

[Guest]

Two nights ago, I e-mailed a large number of friends and relatives (about 30) a copy of a meme @mike carey posted regarding the sinking of that Moskva battleship by Ukraine, which I'd found particularly hilarious. One of the friends I send this to was an old high school friend, who lives in Los Angeles and with whom I recently have more or less reconnected. He went to UCSC and I went to UCLA, then by the time I'd moved back to the Oakland area, he'd moved down to LA, so it was only the occasional Christmas card for many years, but he and his wife have met up with "Chris" and myself a number of times since I moved back to LA (and I saw him once before I hooked up with "Chris"). 

Most people to whom I sent the meme who responded just said hello, maybe with some updates. In part of his response, however, he said "...generally bad form to send an email to a large group in the "to:" field--more appropriate to use the "bcc:..." . In general, I've mainly used the BCC when I'm doing an FYI, generally in a business sense (such as BCC'ing my financial advisor an e-mail I'm sending to my accountant). I've never done this for this type of light-hearted mailing to friends and family. 

So did I commit some sort of faux pas in sending the mailing to everyone, or was my high school chum just being difficult?
 

[mike carey]

@Unicorn I don't think it's a hanging offence but it's an increasingly common view that it's bad form to share other people's private e-mail addresses unless you're sure they would be happy with that. Even if you think they know each other, you won't always know what the state of their current relationship is.

Using BCC rather than TO or CC is the easiest way to do this. Some e-mail apps allow you to create address lists that I'm pretty sure don't allow recipients to see the actual addresses that are included in it.  Some time ago I received an e-mail about a reunion that had all the addresses in the TO line and even though I hadn't really thought about it before, I thought then it probably wasn't the best way to do it. (Later correspondence used the BCC method, and not on my suggestion.)

[jeezifonly]

He’s not being difficult.

Many of the people on a distribution are strangers to one another, and most people don’t want to give their names and email to strangers. Send it to yourself and add all the recipients in bcc. (B for Blind, meaning the distribution itself is not disclosed.) Thank him for the response and follow his advice.   

[Guest]

12 minutes ago, mike carey said:

...Even if you think they know each other, you won't always know what the state of their current relationship is...

Good to know. Never thought of it that way. Thanks for the information. I learned something new! 🙂 No one's ever called me on that before, so maybe it took someone I've known for 4 and a half decades to break it to me! All of those years I've been just sending off those memes!

[Kevin Slater]

It's not just the privacy issue, it's that if you CC everyone, anyone replying also has the option of CCing everyone, so the whole group has just been added to a email thread that's now going to fill their inbox.  Were you to BCC the list, replies could only go to you, rather than spamming everyone.

Kevin Slater

[jjkrkwood]

I learned back in my working days that it was simply corporate "ettiquette" to use the BCC when emailing groups of indiividuals, which seems to have caught on in the "civilian" world for the reasons presented by @Kevin Slater, unless of course All these individuals have agreed to be a part of a distribution list.  

[+ sync]

Many thanks to all above.

This is very good need-to-know information for me.  

I have never before given a thought about the perils in the inadvertent divulgence of others' email addresses.

[mike carey]

@Unicorn thank you for raising this subject. Even of only one other person is given pause to think about e-mail addresses you've performed a service for all of us.

[+ sniper]

On 4/22/2022 at 8:07 AM, jjkrkwood said:

I learned back in my working days that it was simply corporate "ettiquette" to use the BCC when emailing groups of indiividuals, which seems to have caught on in the "civilian" world for the reasons presented by @Kevin Slater, unless of course All these individuals have agreed to be a part of a distribution list.  

In a work situation when it's internal I almost never bcc because I don't want twenty people forwarding it to each other "FYI". I'll occasionally bcc my boss on something just to keep him in the loop on what I'm doing.

[marylander1940]

On 4/22/2022 at 2:49 AM, Unicorn said:

Two nights ago, I e-mailed a large number of friends and relatives (about 30) a copy of a meme @mike carey posted regarding the sinking of that Moskva battleship by Ukraine, which I'd found particularly hilarious. One of the friends I send this to was an old high school friend, who lives in Los Angeles and with whom I recently have more or less reconnected. He went to UCSC and I went to UCLA, then by the time I'd moved back to the Oakland area, he'd moved down to LA, so it was only the occasional Christmas card for many years, but he and his wife have met up with "Chris" and myself a number of times since I moved back to LA (and I saw him once before I hooked up with "Chris"). 

Most people to whom I sent the meme who responded just said hello, maybe with some updates. In part of his response, however, he said "...generally bad form to send an email to a large group in the "to:" field--more appropriate to use the "bcc:..." . In general, I've mainly used the BCC when I'm doing an FYI, generally in a business sense (such as BCC'ing my financial advisor an e-mail I'm sending to my accountant). I've never done this for this type of light-hearted mailing to friends and family. 

So did I commit some sort of faux pas in sending the mailing to everyone, or was my high school chum just being difficult?
 

Some people come with instructions because they don't play well with others.

Btw I haven't send emails that way in a long time and I keep in touch using WhatsApp sending messages to groups and some friends/neighbors who are not in any group. 

[+ WilliamM]

21 minutes ago, marylander1940 said:

Some people come with instructions because they don't play well with others.

Btw I haven't send emails that way in a long time and I keep in touch using WhatsApp sending messages to groups and some friends/neighbors who are not in any group. 

I believe @Unicorn agrees to make a change. Smart man.

[spider]

I once was included on a mass mailing sent by an escort letting them know we has going to be in town. HUGH faux pas!  It looked like at least most of the emails were burners.