Overview

In schools, student privacy is a major concern. To help ensure privacy, LoopMail hides the email address of all users and offers the Bcc ("blind carbon copy", "blind courtesy copy" or "blank carbon copy) addressing option.

Since the use of Bcc is not always clearly understood, this article a basic explanation on its proper use.

Reference Information

Addressing Options

There are three addressing options typical of all email clients as well as LoopMail: To, Cc, and Bcc.

• To: These are the primary recipients of your message.
• Cc (Carbon Copy): Other interested parties should be included here.
• Bcc (Blind Carbon Copy): These recipients are not listed. No recipient of the message can see the Bcc list.

Use Case

For instance, an administrator wishes to send an announcement to the parents of students enrolled in Special Education courses. To protect the privacy of all students and parents, the administrator is careful to not include the names of students or other details that might be used to identify a particular student.

Unfortunately, the administrator included all parents in the Cc field of the email message. When the message is received, each parent can see the full list of parents who were included in the message.

To completely hide the recipient list in the scenario above, the administrator should have addressed the message to himself (in the To field) and included all of the parents in the Bcc field. In doing so, each parent would still be able to see the message, while no other recipient would be listed.

Using this technique ensures that the administrator's efforts to protect privacy are complete.