Buford T. Justice said:
Is there a way to get these fields to display in the preview? It is
getting old double-clicking on messages to get this information.
Thanks,
BTJustice
Strange that OL2003 would delete a feature that was in OL2002. I'm
using OL2002 and the Preview *does* show the To and Cc headers (if you
have it showing the header information; right-click on the top boundary
of the Preview pane and select the Headers option to show them).
OL2002's Preview pane shows From, Subject, To, and Cc. OL2003 does have
those?
No e-mail client will (or should not) show you the Bcc header. Wouldn't
make any sense. YOU don't get ANYTHING regarding the recipients in the
Bcc header that was specified by the sender - because there never was a
Bcc header added! The Bcc field in the e-mail client just adds to the
recipient list used by the e-mail client when it sends the RCPT commands
to the SMTP server to specify the list of recipients. You don't get any
of that handshaking information (i.e., the SMTP commands) between the
sender's e-mail client and their SMTP server.
It is possible on some old mail servers that were improperly configured
that they would not strip out the Bcc header on a send, if the e-mail
client was stupid enough to actually put it in the *data* sent during
the DATA command to the SMTP server, or would not strip it out when the
message was received. Don't know how many of these old and
misconfigured mail servers are still around. According to RFC 2822:
3.6.3 Destination address fields
"... The "Bcc:" field (where the "Bcc" means "Blind Carbon Copy")
contains addresses of recipients of the message whose addresses are not
to be revealed to other recipients of the message. There are three ways
in which the "Bcc:" field is used. In the first case, when a message
containing a "Bcc:" field is prepared to be sent, the "Bcc:" line is
removed even though all of the recipients (including those specified in
the "Bcc:" field) are sent a copy of the message. In the second case,
recipients specified in the "To:" and "Cc:" lines each are sent a copy
of the message with the "Bcc:" line removed as above, but the recipients
on the "Bcc:" line get a separate copy of the message containing a
"Bcc:" line. (When there are multiple recipient addresses in the "Bcc:"
field, some implementations actually send a separate copy of the message
to each recipient with a "Bcc:" containing only the address of that
particular recipient.) Finally, since a "Bcc:" field may contain no
addresses, a "Bcc:" field can be sent without any addresses indicating
to the recipients that blind copies were sent to someone. Which method
to use with "Bcc:" fields is implementation dependent, but refer to the
"Security Considerations" section of this document for a discussion of
each."
5 Security Considerations
"... Many implementations use the "Bcc:" (blind carbon copy) field
described in section 3.6.3 to facilitate sending messages to recipients
without revealing the addresses of one or more of the addressees to the
other recipients. Mishandling this use of "Bcc:" has implications for
confidential information that might be revealed, which could eventually
lead to security problems through knowledge of even the existence of a
particular mail address. For example, if using the first method
described in section 3.6.3, where the "Bcc:" line is removed from the
message, blind recipients have no explicit indication that they have
been sent a blind copy, except insofar as their address does not appear
in the message header. Because of this, one of the blind addressees
could potentially send a reply to all of the shown recipients and
accidentally reveal that the message went to the blind recipient. When
the second method from section 3.6.3 is used, the blind recipient's
address appears in the "Bcc:" field of a separate copy of the message.
If the "Bcc:" field sent contains all of the blind addressees, all of
the "Bcc:" recipients will be seen by each "Bcc:" recipient. Even if a
separate message is sent to each "Bcc:" recipient with only the
individual's address, implementations still need to be careful to
process replies to the message as per section 3.6.3 so as not to
accidentally reveal the blind recipient to other recipients."
I don't recall getting any e-mails for, well, since as long as I can
remember where the Bcc header was anywhere within the received copy of
the message put in my mailbox. I obviously have not inspected every
e-mail that I got to check if its headers included a Bcc header but I've
reviewed enough of them to get a good sample to know it won't be there.
So there's no point in showing a field in your e-mail client for a
header that won't be there. Besides respecting the privacy of
recipients by using the Bcc field to NOT divulge their e-mail addresses
to each other, it also prevents someone in that list from spamming,
slamming, or otherwise sending e-mails to the other recipients. If you
want to know who were the Bcc'ed recipients, ask the sender but
obviously there was a reason the sender used Bcc and your request for
disclosure will just get trashed. I suppose the Bcc header could be
there depending on which [old] mail server you use for sending or
receiving, but it highly unlikely that you'll have a Bcc header in the
received copy of the message put into your mailbox.
