正解The correct answer is ア, “Set all employees’ addresses in BCC (blind carbon copy) only.” An e-mail has three address fields: TO (the main recipients), CC (carbon copy, people who are sent the same content for reference), and BCC (blind carbon copy, people who are invisible to the other recipients). Addresses written in TO and CC appear on every recipient’s mail screen, whereas addresses written in BCC cannot be seen by the other recipients at all. When a questionnaire is sent to all employees, this difference causes problems mainly in two ways. First, if all employees are listed in TO or CC, the e-mail addresses of every employee — personal information — become known to all recipients. Second, and this is what the question asks about, the inconvenience that occurs when people reply: if an employee who received the mail through TO or CC carelessly chooses “Reply All”, that employee’s questionnaire answer is delivered to all employees, so the content of the answer becomes known to others, and as many unnecessary mails as there are employees flood everyone’s mailbox. If all employees’ addresses are set only in BCC, the recipients cannot see the other addresses, so even a reply to all goes back only to the sender; neither exposure of addresses nor scattering of replies occurs. Therefore ア is appropriate.
×Incorrectイ
CC is the field for people who are sent the same content for reference, and addresses written there are displayed to all recipients. All employees’ e-mail addresses would therefore become known to all employees, and if a recipient replies to all, the questionnaire answer would reach every employee and a large amount of unnecessary mail would also be generated. The very inconvenience at reply time that this question tries to prevent would occur just the same, so this is inappropriate. In addition, leaving TO empty and using only CC makes it unclear who the actual recipients are, which is undesirable in practice as well.
×Incorrectウ
TO is the field that specifies the main recipients, and just like CC, addresses written there are displayed to all recipients. If all employees are listed in TO, everyone’s address is left exposed, and the inconvenience of an answer being delivered to all employees by a reply to all cannot be prevented either. The key point of this question is that TO must not be used for a broadcast mail when the recipients must not learn each other’s addresses, so ウ is the setting that should be avoided most.
×Incorrectエ
Even when BCC is used as well, the moment all employees’ addresses are also set in TO, the TO part becomes visible to every recipient, so neither the exposure of addresses nor the scattering of answers caused by a reply to all can be prevented. Furthermore, putting the same set of all employees in both TO and BCC means each person receives the same mail twice, doubling the wasted volume of delivery. The effect of BCC only comes into play when no addresses are written in the other fields, so エ is inappropriate.
ここがポイント
The difference between TO / CC / BCC: TO is for the main recipients, CC (carbon copy) is for people who are sent a copy for reference, and addresses specified in either of these fields are displayed to all recipients. Only addresses specified in BCC (blind carbon copy) are invisible to the other recipients. The basic principle is to use BCC when sending a broadcast mail to people who do not know one another, or to a large number of people whose addresses must not be revealed.
The two inconveniences that arise when many addresses are listed in the TO / CC fields of a broadcast mail: (1) e-mail addresses, which are personal information, leak to all recipients; (2) once a recipient uses “Reply All”, the reply reaches every recipient, leaking the content of the answer and causing a flood of unnecessary mail (a mail explosion). If the addresses are set only in BCC, replies go back only to the sender, so both problems are prevented.