Is there any set of etiquette or ethical rules for CCing and BCCing for email?
Let’s consider some cases
If X emails me something, and send it only to me, but it’s trivial, there shouldn’t be a problem if I CC or BCC it to someone else we know
1b) If X emails me something that is personal, or work-related stuff, some discretion should be practiced with forwarding the mail to someone else. What’s the guideline? For example, I once emailed someone at work about my difficulty in a part of the project, and addressed it to him only, and the next thing I know he has CCed it to my superior and his superior, supposedly to keep ‘people in the loop’.
There was another time the person emailed back, addressed specifically to me only, somewhat in the situation as mine above (somehow this times he feels he doesn’t need to keep the superiors in the loop this time). Ethically, should I put it in a CC/BCC for ‘keeping people in the loop’? Ethics being subjective, what about etiquette? (In the end I stick to my ‘perceived right way of doing things’ and didn’t)
How about BCC (blind carbon copy)? You attach a copy of the mail (of said situation above) to the superiors without the other knowing? What are the rules for etiquette for this?
For those who work at a paper/email trail culture, is there any shorthand for ‘please keep this email to yourself?’
Ah, email politics at work. It seems we have to flood our bosses with email to indicate to them we are not spending all our Internet time reading the Dope.
PS. Can someone ask a mod to change the title? It’s ethics, not ethnics facepalm
I have to do tons of emails everyday, with students and faculty.
BCC is the same as CYA (cover your ass) and I use it to show what I have written to someone, so if they come back and claim otherwise, the proof is there. Plus, it shows those on the BCC list that I am indeed following up on certain situations so they can discuss it with me privately if necessary.
I cc people if I think they should be a part of the “conversation”, and openly let the others know these people were included in this exchange. (In your example, I would never cc someone on a subject that was personal, unless I let you know in advance.) Again, I have that email in my inbox and could forward it at a later date if for whatever reason it became necessary.
For simple emails, “How do I register for that class?” I don’t cc or bcc anyone - I figure I have the copy in my “sent” files, should there ever be the claim I didn’t respond, or didn’t respond quickly enough.
Writing this, I realize how many people are looking over my shoulder as I do my work - which is why I usually err on the side of caution and either cc or bcc someone else.
The way bcc works with internet email is straight forward. If you bbc something to someone, the other recipients cannot see that it was bcc’d to someone else and even reply all does not send the reply message to those bcc’d on the original.
This is not how it worked with early versions of cc:Mail. Reply all would reply to all senders, even those who were originally bcc’d if the original was to and from cc:Mail accounts. You could reply all and invisibly send it to people you could not see were on the hidden bcc list. For added fun, on the Mac version it was incredibly easy to accidentally bcc someone.
At one work place, the list of all people with email, over 10,000 people, was the first item in the address book. One unlucky unobservent sender sent an email out about whether some woman should be allowed to take some test (I believe it was for determining promotion prospects) again after having failed it, and bcc’d the all all list. The reply went out to everyone that well, why not let her take it as often as she wanted. She was dumber than a box of hair (or blunt words to that effect) and could take it now until the cows come home and not pass it. And thus began a bunch of replies all about how this was inappropriate and why am I getting these emails?
/hijack
In a work environment, observe the etiquette of the office you are in. In some places I have been, bcc’ing supervisors was SOP. Others, if you needed to copy someone you used cc no matter what. Always assume that anything you type on your work computer might be read by someone else.
It is often polite and best to use bcc for emails to larger groups just to avoid bad feelings if someone incorrectly replies all. Martini Enfield gives good advice for personal emails.
Hereare a few linksabout the ethicsof e-mail. And trust me, there are tons. Just google “e-mail etiquette” and you’ll find that everyone has an opinion.
I know this wasn’t the question in the OP, but this should be emphasized. If you wouldn’t want your email CC’d or BCC’d to someone, you’re better off not emailing it at all. If your company is on a server the administrator and/or your boss can most likely read all emails that have been sent on the server at any time, even if they’ve been deleted. Some companies actively monitor emails.
Even the ones that don’t, you never know what might turn up one day. At my old job someone abruptly quit a sales position. He had been deleting all his business emails, some of which had important information for the next person that took over the sales position, so my boss went through his deleted emails on the server to salvage some of the information. He found emails from conversations between the former employee and a couple active employees that were pretty incriminating to the people still working there, who stupidly thought they were having a private conversation (one even admitted skipping work to go to the beach).
I cc anyone I mention or quote in an email, so that person knows they’ve been referenced and they have an opportunity to correct me if I get something wrong.
I bcc my boss on some things when I don’t trust the recipient.
True, but if someone who was BCCed does a ‘reply all’, it will expose the fact that you BCCed them, which can be embarrassing. For that reason, I never use BCC. If I want to send the email to someone unbeknownst to the other recipients, I email people openly, then forward that email elsewhere with an “FYI” introduction to those people I am “blind copying”.
I view BCC as kind of a dick maneuver, and only do it someone has screwed me in the past. If someone has told my boss that I haven’t done my job, I will start doing BCC to my boss and his.
Sometimes, if I am emailing a group and realize that some might not want others in the group to know their email address, I do a large BCC. That is done a courtesy, and is not meant to be a dick maneuver.
You’re kidding! You mean I’ve been wasting my time with a telegraph all these years?
CrazyChop–I don’t think there’s really any way to ask them to keep it to themselves, especially if there is tension between you.
And I agree that it’s pretty standard to send a large group mailing with all addresses as BCCs. That’s quite different than BCCing one person to hide the fact that you’re CCing them.
I used to be a system admin and it was quite true that if we wanted we could go in and read anything, not only did we monitor email and Internet but we could turn on a keystroke logger. (We didn’t use this as it too up too much of the disk, so we only used it if someone had an error happening and we couldn’t pin point it.)
As I used to say to each new employee, if you wouldn’t want the GM of the company to read it, do NOT send it.
Corporate e-mail is not private. Any email you send over company systems belongs to the company. As a government worker, I am well aware that every single email I send can be FOIA’d and published in the Washington Post.
I find that if I stick to doing honest work and try not to editorialize in any emails (which serves no helpful purpose anyway), nothing I send will ever be embarrassing if forwarded to the entire agency. Don’t use email to complain, whine, gossip, judge or vent.
Emailing on private networks is a whole ‘nother ball o’ wax.
Some email applications provide technological mechanisms that enable senders to define whether recipients may forward or perform other actions upon email messages. However, ultimately even these tools are to keep honest people honest–for example, if I really wanted to I could take a photograph of the message on my screen and send that on.
I don’t remember the title or author of the book (helpful, no?), but some historian of technology once wrote about the rhetoric and etiquette of communication that developed as a result of having large numbers of messenger boys in Victorian-era cities. It was quite similar to patterns of communication in email.
