Specifying Recipients for Email

Figure 4.13. Recipients List

Recipients List

Like most email programs, Columba recognizes three types of addresses: Primary recipients, secondary recipients and hidden ("blind") recipients.

The simplest way to direct a message is to put the address in the To: field, which denotes primary recipients. To send a message to more than one or two people, use the Cc: field.

"Cc" stands for "Carbon Copy" (if you need further explanation, ask someone familiar with typewriters!). Use it whenever you want to share a message you have written with someone else.

Bcc: (Blind Carbon Copy) is a little bit more complex. You use it like Cc:, but people on the Bcc: list are hidden from the other recipients of the message. Use it to send a mail to a large group of people, especially, especially if they don't know each other or if privacy is a concern.

Tip

In these days where Spam is more prevalent than real Email, it is a very good idea to use Bcc instead of Cc whenever possible. There are an increasing number of viruses and other internet nasties that are very capable of scanning all of your stored messages for new addresses and then forwarding these addresses on for sending further spam.

Now you might be very internet savy and have defenses against such problems but do all the people you correspond with? It only takes one message on an insecure machine and you have inadvertantly become part of the problem.

When using Bcc, the recipient of the message only sees your email address and his own because the email server creates a new message for each email address in your Bcc list. Email is for commmunication, not to show how many people you know!

If you frequently write mail to the same group of people, you can create address lists in the addressbook, and then send them mail as though they had a single address.