Anyone who has emailed a group of people has probably committed this error. Once you click send, you always say a four letter word to yourself. You know what you did, but it’s too late to go back.

Sending an email and including everyone in the to or the cc (copy) field provides all the receipients of the email with a list of who you send the email to. Companies sending out press releases or marketing messages sometimes manually mass mail to a list of people. You copy a list of emails and include it in the cc field. Easy and quick way to let everyone know about the news you want to share.

The problem is that when you send this email out to important members of companies, investors or media outlets, this list can become very valuable. If you happen to be on a list, your “private” email address is now fair game for similar types of messages from other companies. Say hello to spam.

On a smaller scale of personal emails, your email address can become public thru chain emails. A joke forwarded from one friend to another may include who the email originally came from.  If you forward an email, consider whether the previous senders really want their email address shared and edit the message accordingly.

When I send emails out, I always think about the fact this email could be forwarded and shared with anyone, people I do or do not know. Hopefully the people who receive it will take my email address out of the email before they send it along.

There are numerous ways to prevent the mass public emailing. When you send out an email to a group, include the emails in the BCC (blind copy). This field is never shown. Until email programs realize this is a problem and can warn users that cc’ing ten or more people may be unusual behavior, and prompt you, it’s best to look again before clicking the send button.