A lot of people don’t use, or even know what CC means when addressing and sending an email. CC stands for Carbon Copy. Read the HowStuffWorks article here to discover more about this useful capability.
What is even more useful is BCC – which stands for Blind Carbon Copy. I use this all the time when sending emails to a group of people where you don’t want all the recipients to know who else has received the email. This is important when you think the email might be forwarded on to others (such as when you are forwarding funny jokes, stories, etc., that you have received) and you don’t want your recipients email addresses to be exposed to other people further down the track. These type of emails are a great hunting ground for nefarious actors who collect email addresses to then sell to scammers. I’ve had my email address scraped like this from emails sent to me, that then get forwarded on by another recipient to a new set of people. It is possible for your email to be forwarded hundreds of times by many people, and the exposed email addresses eventually end up with people you you don’t know.
So be kind to your friends by hiding their email addresses using BCC when you think the email might be forwarded on again.