In schools, student privacy is a major concern and, therefore, is a major concern for School Loop. To help ensure privacy, LoopMail hides the email address of all of our users and we offer the Bcc addressing option. Since the use of Bcc is not always clearly understood, we present this short tutorial on the proper use of blind carbon copy (also known as blind courtesy copy or blank carbon copy).
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: Other interested parties should be included here.
Bcc: These recipients are not listed. No recipient of the message can see the Bcc list.
A Common Scenario
An administrator wants 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 where included in the message.
A Better Solution
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 see that the message was sent by the administrator to himself. No other recipients are listed. Using this technique ensures that the administrator's efforts to protect privacy are complete.
