Sometimes it would be useful if an email system had the feature where you could add a special covering note to blind copy ("Bcc:") recipients. These recipients tend to be the sort of people who are in your confidence. You might well be doing work for them which interacts with external organisations who you don't want to tell everything to.

A covering note might give background information, or explain what you're going to do next, or what you're being careful not to tell the "To:" and "Cc:" recipients.
-- hippo, Mar 13 2006

tentative plus! be wary with your emails.
-- po, Mar 13 2006


see my lengthy, incredibly amusing, witty, thought provoking, inspiring, detailed commentary link about this idea....where is it ? not on my Bcc list then ! +
-- xenzag, Mar 13 2006


Then you know that the UI must have been really badly designed.
-- hippo, Mar 13 2006


Often I have sent the email, then forwarded it to who should have been Bcc:, and then added some other comments! Perhaps an 'expanding' Bcc would avoid errors?
-- Ling, Mar 13 2006


//What if you get them mixed up?//

My sentiments exactly. If I had to blind copy someone, chances are that I have either discussed the email with them previously or I sent them a separate message. I would hate the embarassment of sending the secret message to everyone thinking it just went to my BCC recipients.
-- Jscotty, Mar 13 2006


I am boning this. A blind carbon copy should be exactly that, an exact copy of the message sent to someone not on the internal distibution list. No more. Send a separate message if you want to comment on the other message.
-- Galbinus_Caeli, Mar 13 2006


Not at all. The real world analogy - blind carbon copies - routinely had notes attached to explain the relevance of the information, where it wasn't obvious. This seems like a valuable addition.
-- DrCurry, Mar 13 2006


If designed even moderately well the system will not allow the BCC: version of the message, the BCC: commented version, to go to anyone other than the BCC: recipients. The real disaster is when a BCC: recipient responds via a Reply All so some thought as to how to prevent that is needed.

Maybe a BCC: version of the message doesn't allow a Reply All or, alternatively, the original To: and CC: recipient data is moved out of the destination fields and to the message body upon sending so that a Reply All only picks up the addressees on the BCC: line but still allows those to see to whom the To: and CC: message was sent to.
-- bristolz, Mar 13 2006


I just open an already sent message as "new" and change the recipients to whoever might be on a bcc list, and that way I've got plenty of space to write new notes... AND I've insured that I won't inadvertently say something that goes to the wrong person. I think BCC is a little dumb on email anyway. [-]
-- zigness, Mar 13 2006


//I think BCC is a little dumb on email anyway// you wouldn't if you had to scroll down two pages of contacts to get to the message.
-- po, Mar 13 2006


[po], I feel bad for you... really, I do... there are a lot of other ways to handle that problem though. Depends on the email software being used.
-- zigness, Mar 13 2006


zig, I would reply but I feel the interface may not show my answer for days now - its all very weird...
-- po, Mar 13 2006



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