E-Mails: What's the difference between CC and BCC?

Generally, e-mails are not complicated and don't require deeper knowledge. Nevertheless, it is interesting to clarify some common terms. We explain the difference between CC and BCC.

CC and BCC: Visible or invisible - a letter with a decisive effect.

If you write a lot of emails, you will probably already know the difference between CC and BCC. For the exact meaning of the acronyms, this does not necessarily apply.

CC and BCC: The small but subtle difference

The difference between CC and BCC is quickly explained:

• CC stands for Carbon Copy, translated "carbon copy", which describes a classic procedure for a copy.
• BCC means Blind Carbon Copy. So it is also a copy in the form of another recipient, but without the knowledge of the main recipient.
• As a practical example: you send an email to person A and put person B in CC. Person A sees when receiving the mail that person B has also received the mail via CC. With BCC it is different: Here person B gets a copy of the mail, but person A cannot see this. In general, BCC recipients are not visible to anyone, not even to other people in BCC.

BCC is thus used for strategic reasons, the reasons can be quite different. Es ist übrigens auch möglich, CC und BCC in einer Mail mit mehreren Empfängern parallel einzusetzen.