A startup company was reported to have sent an email message to their list and included in it was the email address of everyone on their list. In case you’re not familiar, each time you send an email from your email client (like Outlook) and you CC a bunch of people, everyone both on the TO and CC will get to view the addresses of the others and see who else the email was sent to.

A common practice is to use the BCC field instead but perhaps the bigger lesson to learn here is – if you’re in business or are trying to be in business, use business grade tools and don’t rely on your email client. Besides opening yourselves up to a lot of mistakes, you could get banned quickly and easily maybe even have your Internet access shut down by your ISP in the blink of an eye mass mailing from your desktop.

Don’t think you can’t afford it (I’ve heard it too often) when starting up because when you make a mistake like this, the price you pay is higher.

Now I’m not saying just by using a (paid) mailing list or autoresponder service you will eliminate all your mistakes. Each service is different but take for example AWeber which I use – it’s almost impossible for me to make a similar mistake since there are no TO’s and CC’s. All you get to worry about is crafting the message. And should such a technical glitch come up – though unlikely since they too have a reputation to keep – the problem is not 100% on my shoulders. And that let’s me sleep soundly at night.

Source and full story at TechDirt