Instant BCC 2016-04-22

Today, Ashley had a problem:

The only innovation I want is to be able to start an email thread and bcc myself out of it at the same time.

— Ashley Mayer (@ashleymayer) April 22, 2016

Now, it would be possible to build a little app to do this easily enough; email can be sent from a 'do not reply' type address, with you BCC'd, but Ashley wants this in her email client, which is gmail. Fortunately there is a way:

1. Go to the Settings > Accounts and Import page
2. In the 'Send Mail as:' section, click 'Add another email address you own'
3. In the popup, put BCC after your name and +bcc after your email address
4. uncheck 'Treat as an alias'
5. set the Reply-to address to one that blackholes messages (I used that facebook one)
6. click 'Next Step' and you're done.

Now, when you want to send a BCC mail:

1. Click Compose as usual.
2. Choose the BCC address from the pop-down
3. Address people as usual, and send

And if, like Rick, you want this on by default, make it your default address.