Talk:Blind carbon copy

Synonyms

I found this here http://searchsmb.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,290660,sid44_gci756654,00.html

Eudora and perhaps other e-mail facilities, you'll see the abbreviations "Fcc" and "Bcc". "Fcc" is the same as "cc" or carbon copy - that is, send a copy of the message to the address you fill in. "Bcc" stands for "Blind carbon copy" which says: send a copy to another address...but in this case, don't indicate to the Fcc recipient that you also sent this copy. Since today the term courtesy copy is sometimes used instead of carbon copy, Bcc can also stand for blind courtesy copy.

is that correct

ISPs bouncing BCC recipients?

In the July 2006 issue of PC World (page 45), it is claimed that "some ISPs matter-of-factly bounce them" [referring to BCC addresses]. Has anyone noticed behaviour of this sort? Which ISPs have taken such an extreme measure, and under what pretenses? Porfyrios 16:52, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

snail mail

Since BCC serves the same function in snail mail, why is this treatment limited to email? Is there a parallel discussion I'm missing somewhere else? Fitzaubrey 06:13, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Bcc recipients

So:

1. A Bcc recipient cannot see who else the email was sent to

AND

2. Other recipients can't see the Bcc recipient

Is my understanding correct? Or is it just one of the two? I'm confused...--Nick90210 05:53, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Same here. There's quite a difference between the two scenarios! 129.21.240.106 (talk) 23:40, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I believe Bcc means the above 2 ONLY: i.e. other recipients can't see the Bcc recipient. The above 1 is false, so a bcc recipient CAN see who else the email was sent to (exept other Bcc recipients!). Can anyone confirm this? Then at least this sentence in the article should be revised:

"BCC: field recipients are those being discreetly or surreptitiously informed of the communication and cannot see any of the other addressees." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gormat (talk • contribs) 10:02, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I've fixed this RichardNeill (talk) 13:39, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Everybody who receives the email will be able to see the To: and CC: field. Nobody can see who is in the BCC: field. Azrael# 10:25, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree that it seems to be the common belief (as in these web pages: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]) that nobody can see who is in the BCC field, but RFC 2882 does seem to say that the addresses in Bcc might get a copy of the list of addresses in Bcc. The wording is:

  'In the second case... the recipients on the "Bcc:" line 
  get a separate copy of the message containing a "Bcc:" line.' 

I think there is some ambiguity about what is in this Bcc line: just the address of the recipient? or the whole Bcc list? I am unclear about the use of the word "separate": (why not just say "copy" rather than "separate copy"?) does it mean that each Bcc recipient gets a different copy? If so this maybe implies that each Bcc recipient gets a version with just their own address in Bcc. This would match with the statement in brackets in the RFC:

  '(When there are multiple recipient
  addresses in the "Bcc:" field, some implementations actually send a
  separate copy of the message to each recipient with a "Bcc:"
  containing only the address of that particular recipient.)' 

Maybe this bracketed part is intended to apply to all cases where anyone is sent a Bcc line. If so, then it means that it true that addresses in Bcc are not revealed to anyone else.

Does anyone know of any specific software, or situations, where the complete list in Bcc is sent to any recipient?

A note about the RFCs and their status: RFC 2822, which is at present quoted in the article, has a note that it is obsoleted by RFC 5322, but this is not that important as the two RFCs are identical as far as I can see in what they say about Bcc.

More important is that 5322 is noted as being just a DRAFT STANDARD. I have not been able to locate an actual internet standard, so the article seems to be incorrect in saying that RFC 2822 is an internet standard - I am not sure about this - does anyone know better? I have not made any changes to the article yet. FrankSier (talk) 22:49, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Looking further at RFC 5322, the Security Considerations section does say explicitly:

   If the "Bcc:" field sent contains all
  of the blind addressees, all of the "Bcc:" recipients will be seen by
  each "Bcc:" recipient. 

which tends to confirm that the RFC does allow for the possibility of the whole Bcc list to be sent to at least some recipients. Does anyone know how often this happens in actual practise? FrankSier (talk) 23:15, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

What does Field recipients mean?

I probably shouldn't be reading this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.158.96.131 (talk) 01:20, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Security

I heard a rumour that it is possible to determine who is on your Bcc list of a message. Is there any evidence for/against this rumour? I think that would be useful info to have on this article. --RealGrouchy (talk) 23:37, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

The received email will not have the BCC: header filled in with email addresses. It could be determined by somebody who has access to the mail server, but not by a regular recipient. Azrael# 10:28, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Also there are some mail clients when there are more than 50 bcc addresses failto keep them as bcc and send as cc. I understand but have not personally verified that outlook express 2000 and 2003 do this. should a comment like this be ncluided in the main article? andrew Bear8 (talk) 04:29, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

What's in the name?

Blind Carbon Copy; where the heck did they get the 'carbon' from? It would have been better if they renamed it to 'Blind Client Copy' or something. Carbon is supposedly black ink on paper when you write with a pencil. Blind is also a weird term, because even if you're blind you can still feel and perhaps read the inprint, whether you see the ink or not. BCC completely masks or hides the recipients, so that the receiver can not backtrace other addresses. Just a minor complaint about the ill chosen word. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.254.64.146 (talk) 12:35, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_paper for the origin of the word "carbon" in this context. Because the idea of sending copies originated in post, not email, the same nomenclature has carried over to the use of email. You're suggesting implementing a bacronym, which is discussed in the "carbon vs courtesy" section.GGdown (talk) 11:05, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Reply

The article seems to present contradictory information. First, it says "BCC is often used to prevent an accidental 'Reply All' from sending a reply intended for only the originator of the message to the entire recipient list". But in a later section, the article says "If the Bcc: header is completely removed, people who receive a blind copy may not notice they are not on either the To: or Cc: and reply to everyone, thus leaking that blind copies were sent." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.202.24.87 (talk) 15:13, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

There's no contradiction, because an email may have both BCC and non-BCC recipients. In the first case, the use of BCC hides the full recipient list from everyone except the sender. In the second case, people who were on the BCC list may reply to all recipients who were not on the BCC list, which leaks the information that there was a BCC list in the first place. Marnanel (talk) 13:14, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Ableist?

People complain about "blacklists" and "master/slave" computer terminology as racist these days. Is "blind carbon copy", then, ableist? 2A00:23C5:FE0C:2100:1D77:BCFD:9BED:31C6 (talk) 15:00, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

"Bcc" can't be the abbr.

Wiktionary lists "bcc" as the primary and BCC as an alternative.

--Mortense (talk) 19:49, 21 May 2022 (UTC)