In business, etiquette is very important, but even more important is respect for privacy. I find myself repeatedly saying that "client data is not mine to lose". Nor is it mine to simply give away.

I received an email recently that was addressed to about 30 recipients, none of whom I knew and none of whom knew me. Yet every last email address and many of the names were there in my inbox -- in every one of our inboxes.

If you need to send an email to multiple recipients to whom you should not reveal the entire list of recipients either send individual emails or hide the recipient list. To hide the list, place all of the email addresses under "BCC" instead of "TO." BCC stands for Blind Carbon Copy. Each recipient under BCC will receive the email along with any addresses in the TO field but with none of the addresses entered under BCC.

For added clarity you can have the email display "undisclosed recipients" by putting your own email address in the TO field but in parenthesis as follows: (me@thejproject.com).