A lesson in bcc, learned the hard way (as usual)—This is my public apology for having “outed” an anonymous blogger

Last fall, I had a brilliant idea. I decided that, whenever I was particularly anxious to get comments to a post, I would send a mass e-mail to a group of bloggers, inviting them to click on over to my blog for a “post party.”

Idiot that I am, it never occurred to me to send the mass e-mail via bcc, blind carbon/courtesy copy. Then, while we were out of town picking up our son from college, I received an e-mail from the newest person on my list in which he informed me that he’d decided to close down his blog because he no longer felt free to post what he wanted to post after I’d sent his real name and e-mail address to over a dozen other bloggers.

True to tell, I was taken aback. It had never occurred to me that a person who’d posted his photo on his blog would still consider his blog to be anonymous. So I tried to remember whether I’d ever encountered a similar situation. And, much to my distress, I realized that I had, indeed, encountered exactly the same situation on the blog that I’d discovered the most recently. As I have no desire to get myself into any more trouble, I’ll describe it only as the blog of the Lady in Navy. This blogger posted a photo of herself in a navy dress, yet still gave no indication of her real name, and did not list any e-mail address whatsoever.

So I’ve learned the hard way that even my mass e-mail from my blog e-mail address has to be sent bcc. In this case, I learned at someone else’s expense.

I cannot begin to tell you how devastated I am that I’ve caused such distress to a fellow blogger. Just thinking about that e-mail still brings tears to my eyes. I am so, so sorry. I sincerely hope that you will be able to ignore my stupidity and continue blogging.