Re: Addresses in BCC box were disclosed

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If you look at the message in your Sent Items folder, and then at the
Message Source (Ctrl-F3) or message properties, you will see the BCC
header. That is by design.

If you look at the message that you got back in your Inbox (since you
put your own name in the BCC), the BCC header should not be there since
OE does not send the BCC header.

If you accidentally used the CC header rather than BCC, then all
recipients get that.

Mail servers never look at the TO, CC or BCC fields in order to route
the mail. They never even get the BCC field. The sender's mail program
uses those fields to generate a list of recipients that is passed to his
SMTP mail server, along with the e-mail message minus the BCC field.
The recipient's e-mail address is carried outside of the e-mail message
itself and passed from server to server, and finally discarded by the
recipient's mail server.

I have heard of cases where an ISP reconstructs the BCC header from the
recipients list. But it would only be able to reconstruct the list for
recipients on that ISP since that is all the mail server gets. So if
you were sending a messages to recipients on ISPs A, B and C and ISP C
were reconstructing the list, then recipients on ISP C could see the
list of other recipients on ISP C, but not on A or B. I believe AOL was
doing this at one time, but I don't know if they still are.

--

Mike - http://pages.prodigy.net/michael_santovec/techhelp.htm


<sanandra@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1137685172.741370.230520@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Hi,
>
> I recently made up a group called Family and Friends in my Address
> Book. When I sent emails, I put my own name in the To box and the
> group
> name in the BCC box. I thought everything was well until one day one
> of
> the recipients replied to one of these mails with a copy of my initial
> email. When I opened it, all of the names in the BCC box were
> disclosed
> and open to my view, and if they save their sent messages, possiby
> open to them as well. Is this just open to me if I get a returned
> email
> or to them when they receive it? Also, when I go to Properties, I can
> see the listing of everyone I sent the email to; can they also do this
> to see who else received this same letter?
>
> Could you tell me why this might have happened and how I could avoid
> this from happening in the future for privacy reasons?
>
> Thanks very much for your help,
> Sanandra
>


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: BCC revealer
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    (microsoft.public.outlook.general)
  • Re: Preventing the use of CC: in outlook express.
    ... You will have an icon on your Desktop now with, depending on how you set it up, that when clicked on will open a new message window with the To and BCC fields already filled in. ... recipients don't want their email address made available to others. ... Potentially, something could be done at your SMTP mail server, assuming ... addresses or even strip or truncate the headers. ...
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  • Re: Can a Bcc recipient use "Reply all"
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  • Re: Separate Email Response or BCC
    ... Tha RagMan wrote: ... Alternately I would like for it to do a BCC. ... I also had issues attempting to send with Bcc: header, ... have been caused by my mail server. ...
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  • Re: Disclosure of BCC field
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