Emails to lots of people

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At this festive time, when we tend to send out emails to our friends and acquaintances, make sure that you don't put a whole list of names into the 'TO' or 'CC' fields, because every recipient will end up with the names and email addresses of all the people you are sending to. There is a privacy issue, of course, but the worst thing is that if ANY of those recipients gets a virus the chances are the entire list of names and email addresses will end up in the hands of spammers or ID fraudsters.

The safe way to do it is to put all the names into the 'BCC' (Blind Carbon Copy) field. Send the email to yourself, with the list in BCC, and that way recipients don't get a list of everyone. If someone gets a virus the spammers don't get the list - much safer.

I was wondering whether to cross-post this to other sections but as that is generally frowned on I won't. If anyone else would like to copy this (or similar) into other sections, be my guest.
 
Tnks for the tip. I was going to say but I don't have a Bcc field, I did on the old computer but not this one, but then I discovered ticking "All headers" in the "view" menu in the "new message" window revealed it!
 
Thanks for pointing that out. Is there some way to do it in Googlemail? Otherwise it is a massive flaw in the system?
 
Don't know - only recently set up Googlemail after several occasions when Outlook Express deleted my entire "Sent" folder! Still trying to get my head round Googlemail which, although having a lot of nice features, isn't the simplest system to operate.
 
With Googlemail and other web-based systems don't you store all your emails on their servers? I find that a bit intimidating....I know your ISP can (and is required by law) to keep certain records there is a difference between the required temporary storage and long-term storage of all your mail and address book, including details of all your mates and correspondents?

There are some really serious privacy issues with using the internet to communicate!
 
Thanks for that. My problems were linked to the periodical "compacting" process that Outlook Express carries out - it corrupted the files so the emails disappeared! I think Outlook Express is one of Microsoft's more disappointing products.
 
I used to use Outlook Express, but now use Thunderbird from Mozilla (who also do Firefox, which seems to be better than Internet Explorer for surfing the WWW), and the Mozilla products so far seem to be working well (touch wood!).
 
I have used Outlook for years - since 1997 - and while it is horribly clunky and a huge overhead, I have yet to lose emails. I regularly backup my outlook.pst file, which I keep in My Documents so whenever I run a data backup outlook.pst is backed up as well (as long as Outlook is closed!).

I don't and would NEVER, EVER allow any compacting program to run unless I had run a full backup first. I suggest you disable that function (I don't know Outlook Express, but I suppose you can turn that off, you can in Outlook?)
 
[ QUOTE ]
the periodical "compacting" process that Outlook Express carries out

[/ QUOTE ]Are you getting Outlook and Outlook Express muddled up

I have used Outlook Express ever since I've been using t'internet without knowing anything about "compacting". Now, however, I use Windows Mail rather than Outlook 2007which I have not even looked at.
 
[ QUOTE ]
This method doesn't necessarily work. For example, Googlemail will still display the bcc email addresses.

[/ QUOTE ]
My understanding is that Googlemail (GMail to the civilised world) works just as Lemain's example. Bcc recipients only see the address you entered in the To field not those in the Bcc field.

In case I was mistaken in my previous use of it (I use Googlemail/GMail Bcc feature all the time) I have double checked this in the Googlemail/GMail's help files and they set out the same process as Lemain describes for concealing address lists of multple recipients. I have also just tested it in both directions by sending to (using Outlook client) and from Googlemail/Gmail and the Bcc addresses were hidden to all but the sender.
 
Yep;
I Second, lemain. On the Outlook thing

I have also been using Outlook as opposed to outlook express for many years and have not had a problem. (yet???)

I also use it as my working Diary, Contacts list, etc. and carry it around daily as part of my hand held Ipaq… which also conveniently synchronises with my laptop thereby keeping all my essential information live on 3 separate working platforms.

Greatest bit of kit since the Fileofax …. (Oh those 1980’s)

Enjoy
 
I checked earlier and OE does compact and you can't stop it from doing so or it becomes unstable. Outlook has an archiving facility but you are not obliged to use it and I never do. From what I read on the MS site the two are very different, with the backup files being hidden in OE and visible in Outlook. With Outlook it's best to move the outlook.pst file to somewhere you can get to is easily and back it up.
 
Outlook compacts as well as having archive facility

Outlook compacts normally in the background, though sometimes it is required to run manual compact (details on how to do it here, but click on links at top for the version of Outlook you have)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/196990

If you use Outlook at lot, then archiving your current PST folder is a good idea, as Outlook versions up to 2002 do not support PST and OST files over 2 GB in size, and if it goes over that you will need to run the MS crop tool if you get error messages, and will lose emails. Outlook 2003 and later don't have the 2GB limitation (on these versions it is about 20GB) but still a good idea to archive

You can set up folders to automatically archive emails in the folder over a certain age, but have the archive pst files open in Outlook at the same time as current pst folder, so you can still easily read old emails
 
The other issue to bear in mind is that many ISP limit the number of recipients you can include on an email. Some ISP may allow quite large numbers, but some can impose limits on 10 or less recipients. So before sending emails to large numbers of recipients, it's worth checking if your ISP has a limit, and what that limit is.
 
The problem with archiving is that while they are retrievable, if they go back many years you've forgotten the existence of the correspondence. I don't think that Find or Google Desktop (my preferred tool these days) will search archived mail? I've even forgotten the existence of some of the files (!) but I don't think I'm alone. The more complicated your affairs the less you trust to human memory.
 
If you enable the google desktop toolbar within Outlook, you can search current and all archived pst files that are currently open within Outlook, from the Google search box in Outlook. I just tested this several times to make sure my memory wasn't failing me /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
Beware of not archiving or compacting in Outlook Express or Outlook. The PST file that Outlook uses is based on the MS JET database format (MS Access basically) and Microsoft do not support a store > 2GB. A store anywhere between 1 and 2GB is liable to corrupt in my experience, so you are best off archiving AND compacting. compacting gets rid of "white space" in the DB
 
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