bcc not blind

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tom
  • Start date Start date
T

Tom

When I send a e-mail to a dist. list every one can see all the addresses in
the bcc.
Outlook 2003.
 
When I send a e-mail to a dist. list every one can see all the
addresses in the bcc.
Outlook 2003.
Click to expand...

If I had to guess, you're doing it wrong. =)

No, seriously. There's no way. Try creating a personal DL with my email
address on it and send me a mail and I'll guarantee you I won't see whatever
other addresses you put on the DL. Heck, I won't even see my own.

How have you tested and verified this happens?
 
Tom said:
When I send a e-mail to a dist. list every one can see all the addresses in
the bcc.
Outlook 2003.
Click to expand...

E-mail clients are not supposed to include the Bcc field as *data* in
the body of the e-mail that they send to the mail server. The To, Cc,
Bcc, Subject, and other *fields* that you see when composing an e-mail
are all data that gets inserted into data that composes the message.
That there is a headers section, delimiter blank line, and body section
is the message is irrelevant because it is all *data* that is generated
by the sender, not headers added by the mail server. So the only way
that the Bcc field would should up in the message is if the e-mail
client put that string in the message that is included in the DATA
command.

When sending an e-mail via SMTP, the e-mail client compiles an aggregate
list of recipients from the To, Cc, and Bcc *fields* displayed in the UI
for that e-mail client. It then sends a *separate* RCPT-TO command to
the mail server for each recipient. For 5 recipients in the To field, 3
in the Cc field, and 2 in the Bcc field, the e-mail client would send 10
RCPT-TO commands to the SMTP server. The recipients NEVER get to see
this list of RCPT-TO commands. These are followed by a single DATA
command that contains your message, and that is whatever the e-mail
client inserted into the header and body sections of that message. So
the only way the recipients get to see who was sent your e-mail client
is from your e-mail client adding lines into the header portion of the
*data* that it sent the mail server.

Outlook does not add the string that was entered in the Bcc *field*
displayed in its GUI into the headers section of the *data* that it sent
to your SMTP mail host. Either you mistook the Cc field as the Bcc
field (maybe because you don't have the Bcc field displayed in the
new-mail compose window) or something else added the string from the Bcc
field into the data of your message. Outlook won't add the Bcc field.
I can't guarantee what Word might do but it shouldn't add the Bcc
field's string, either. I doubt Outlook would strip out any line
beginning with "Bcc: " that it was given as data for the message but it
doesn't add it when Outlook is the new-mail editor.

Perhaps you have a nasty plug-in installed in Outlook. Try running
Outlook in its safe mode ("outlook.exe /safe") to see if the same
problem occurs. You could also include yourself in the list of Bcc
recipients to see what your delivered e-mail looks like rather than rely
on reports from the other recipients as to what they can see.
 
Perhaps you have a nasty plug-in installed in Outlook.

Or a script on a server. We use one that stamps the To in the header so we
can identify the actual address BBC'd mail was sent to. When outbound mail
is routed through that server it includes all the addresses that are in a
BCC.
 
Diane said:
Or a script on a server. We use one that stamps the To in the header so we
can identify the actual address BBC'd mail was sent to. When outbound mail
is routed through that server it includes all the addresses that are in a
BCC.
Click to expand...

Ah yes, in a company, the company gets to decide policy regarding the
use of THEIR own resources. If instead this were for a public e-mail
provider, that action would be unconscionable.
 
Actually, if I ran a public server, I would use the event sink on all
inbound mail. It is really helpful to know what address a message is sent to
when you have multiple addresses assigned to the mailbox and it only shows
the one on the envelope your server receives, not all the BCC'd addresses.
Pushing outbound mail through that server was an 'oops' and it had all the
addresses, since it got the envelope containing all the addresses on the way
out the door. We didn't think about the script when we thought condensing
servers would be a good idea. We discovered it within 24 hours.
 
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