When a user is Blind Carbon Copied (BCC’d) on a thread, they are often a silent observer. However, the “Reply All” button remains active and easily accessible. If a BCC’d recipient clicks “Reply All” and sends a message, they inadvertently reveal their presence to the primary recipients who were unaware they were on the thread. This leads to social/professional friction and “information leaks.”
I propose a double-confirmation modal or a high-visibility warning banner that appears specifically for BCC recipients when they attempt to use “Reply All.”
If a user’s address is in the BCC field, clicking “Reply All” triggers a prompt: “You were BCC’d on this email. Replying all will reveal your presence to everyone on the thread. Are you sure you want to continue?”
I think a yellow warning bar at the top of the compose window (similar to the “External Recipient” warning) or even better a pop-up confirmation upon hitting “Send.”
Radically disable the Reply All option is too much, but… ha ha ha.
I hope this will prevent professional embarrassment and accidental disclosure of confidential monitoring/oversight.
Currently I manually forward emails instead of using BCC to avoid this risk, which breaks the original thread and makes tracking information harder.
Google Workspace gmail already warns users about external recipients; adding a BCC safeguard is a natural extension of that “smart” assistance.