Have you ever received an email, sent to a list, where the sender put everyone in the to: or cc: field of the email?
This has happened to me several times over the past few weeks. As someone who has spent several years in the email marketing business, I’m always a bit curious (and irritated) and I often peek under the covers to view the list of subscribers.
Last year I received a broadcast email from CCAP, the state agency that sells the data (a SOAP interface) we use for ForeclosureAlarm.com. The email included all their other customers in the “to:” field. It was very interesting to see a list of other companies that purchase that data. Very interesting.
Don’t get me wrong, I get a pretty upset when this happens. Not this upset,
but I’m not a happy camper that my email address has been shared with hundreds of people I don’t know. Sometimes I’ll even reply back to the sender letting them know about this magical thing called a bcc.
This gets me to the google and their gmail service. You see, gmail already does some fancy things with their service. For example, if you say something in the email about an attachment, but you don’t actually attach a file, they tell you. Pretty slick and a very nice feature to keep people from embarrassment.
Gmail should be checking emails that include a bunch (dozens or more?) addresses in the cc: or to: fields and then provide a friendly note to the sender, with maybe a link to a knowledge base article, that maybe the sender wants to actually put all those addresses in the bcc: field and why. It would help protect their customers from abusing their friends email address and it would make gmail better. A win win.
There you go Google, keep track of improper use of the “to:” field by your users and it’ll help keep me from feeling like this.
That would be a sweet feature. I hate it when people do that shit to me.