Mailing Lists & Privacy Breaches
Have you ever received a message which shows the names
and email addresses of everyone to whom the message
was sent?
If this list was sent by a government department or
business, they have probably breached privacy legislation
by distributing this list of addresses.
I once received a message from a firm of solicitors
about a bogus virus warning. This email had the names
and email addresses of the senders clients, colleagues,
professional organisations, family, etc. contained in
it. Potentially quite a serious breach of privacy, caused
by a slip of the mouse.
It's easy to fix this problem when sending mail.
BE AWARE that all the addresses you put into the
TO: or CC: fields of your email program will be visible
to EVERYONE who receives the message.
To ensure that people DON'T see the other addresses,
put the addresses into the BCC (Blind Carbon
Copy) field.
It's a simple thing - but one that has the potential
to cause embarrassment (and potential legal action)
if you get it wrong.
Our WebLog post at http://webangel.blogs.com/informer/2003/10/privacy_laws_an.html gives
links to tutorials that show you how to use the BCC
options in Outlook, Eudora, and Netscape.
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