by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, E-Business Consultant
February 21, 2001
"I am starting my own e-mail list, and would like to send an introductory e-mail to a group of people, but want their e-mail address to remain private. I don't want them to be bothered with the Majordomo/YahooGroups process of confirming their subscription to a list which will only be used once. Can you help?" -- Cyril Dadd
Your e-mail program has three fields that carry e-mail addresses of recipients:
To: field
-- All e-mail addresses are visible to all recipients.
Cc: field
-- Stands for "carbon copy." (What is "carbon," Daddy?) E-mail addresses are still visible to all recipients.
Bcc: field
-- Stands for "blind carbon copy." No e-mail addressees are visible to recipients except for one that sometimes must be placed in the To: field.
Find the Bcc: field in your e-mail program -- though you may need to look to find it -- and paste your list of e-mails there. In some e-mail programs there is a limit to the number of e-mail addresses that will fit in this field. While the e-mail addresses are kept private, some recipients may filter out messages that don't have their own e-mail address in the To: field.
This may work for an initial e-mail or two, but if you have a very large list, maintaining the list by hand can become rather burdensome. Then you'll want to begin using a listserver program such as SparkList's Lyris or PostMaster General, or a desktop program such as Mailloop that will help you maintain your list.
