lol your original mail went to the junk folder (automatically by my mail provider), and I confused a lot

LOL, that'd mean you wouldn't get the watch if it weren't for this 'spammer' ...

But the one that actually looks like spam didn't, @ɪBᴜɢ?

Ironically, yes. The Viagra mail stayed sound in my inbox.

Privacy aside, how would BCCing have been any better? Is there some legitimate point to this email message that I'm missing—or is it really nothing more than it appears to be?

The original message — the one where I did not BCC the users — was one informing users that they were entitled to a watch, as per the contest I mention in the answer. The email body shown on the question here was something someone in the chain sent to the whole chain later on, "for fun" :P

I don't blame you at all JNat, everyone makes mistakes. Also I was really glad to see that email. 😁 ⌚

@Jason if I BCC you and a million people, you can't contact the million people. If I CC you and a million people, you can turn around and use the million emails I just shared with you.

@Patrice That's true. However, I have still received spam. I'm not talking about BCC or not, I'm talking about spam having been sent in the first place. How is the email legitimate or desired?

@Jason you mean, in the very comment where you say "How would BCCing"... you're not talking about BCC? Color me confused :/. I was answering that. The email was originally sent from the Meta Swag contest. Which was fine. The issue was that by CCing, the emails of all participants were shared with all others.

@Patrice Yes, that one. Being executed legally doesn't make me feel any better than being murdered. The end result is still as unwanted. For me, it's trivial if somebody is actually empowered to kill me or not. If I get spam that bothers me, I'll take no comfort in knowing that thousands of other people have also been BCCd on it. (Aside from the privacy concern—which is exactly how I started my comment: privacy aside.)

@Jason I mean..... the contest is "please participate". It wasn't unwanted. It required you to participate. The contest even says you will be contacted by email. Did you take a second to check the contest? It wasn't unwanted, or undesired. It was literally people being told "if you participate, you may be contacted by email". I see this as a pretty implicit "yeah you can contact me". At that point, the only issue is the BCC

@Patrice So, the contest literally said that if you signed up you would be the recipient of spam? So far, it doesn't sound like it to me. It sounds like you agreed to be contacted. Not contacted with junk mail.

@Jason the only reason they got junk mail is because they got CCed instead of BCCed, and someone grabbed that list and used it. They signed up for the initial email, expecting that it wouldn't leak their address. I have trouble seeing how that isn't clear, genuinely. The initial email they got, they allowed by participating in the contest. That's the Watch email. It was expected and warranted. Because of the CC/BCC mistake, people also got Viagra emails. That's a problem.

I still don't get your confusion, @Jason — please refer back to this comment; I sent out an email congratulating users who won the watch, and asked them to fill out a form with shipping information. That was the email where I CC'd, instead of BCC'ing, and where the exposure happened. All the subsequent emails were not sent by me, and were supposed to be funny, and not real spam. Does that make sense? :)

@Patrice Actually with some email systems you can reply to BCC'd people by clicking reply all. There are many ways to abuse BCC even today.

@TylerH Really? Never seen/worked on such systems. That sucks -_-

@TylerH would you mind giving an example of such a system? That's surprising to me as well.

@PatrickRoberts There might be a bit of a misunderstanding here, after refreshing my memory on the comments - See usatoday.com/story/tech/personal/2015/03/28/email-bcc/705418‌​76 and skipprichard.com/… and inc.com/hillel-fuld/… In short, a BCC'd user can reply to everyone in the To: and CC: field by clicking reply all... Additionally, I assume that reply all would also cover other BCC'd users, but maybe not (but that's another concern)

@PatrickRoberts Further, people in the To: or CC: field can reply to all users (even BCC'd users) by clicking Reply All. What can't be done is exposing all the BCC users' emails, at least at once.

@TylerH: The BCC user's emails are not shared with any other recipients. You misunderstood the links you shared. Only the sender's mail server sees the addresses of all recipients. The emails sent on to the recipient's email servers do not contain any of the addresses in the BCC list (expect the one address of the person receiving the email). Replying to an email will never send emails to other people on the BCC list, because that list is not available at that time.

@CrisLuengo I did not misunderstand the links. See my comment above, specifically the "What can't be done" bit.

@TylerH: You're saying "I assume that reply all would also cover other BCC'd users" and "people in the To: or CC: field can reply to all users (even BCC'd users) by clicking Reply All". These things are not possible. As a recipient of such an email (whichever list I'm on) I don't have access to BCC'd addresses, and therefore my reply will never reach those addressees. There is no way my email server will have a way of sending my email to those addresses.