Reveal Bcc for recipient

[Neil Wix]

If UserA sends and e-mail to UserB and BCCs UserC, then
UserC get's an e-mail in their box. This e-mail says it
is from UserA and that it is to UserB. UserC cannot
reveal the BCC field for the email to see his name and is
convinced that there is a problem with the Exchange setup
and that he is getting mail that is not intended for him.
Since UserC is my boss, I have a problem. Is this, in
fact, normal behaviour for Outlook 2003, or should he be
able to see his name in a To field somehow? Is there any
way to reveal that the message really intended for UserC???

 

[Rob Schneider]

Suggest you recommend to boss to ban bcc's. It's disingenuous and
organsiationally disruptive for UserA to send mail to UserB with bcc to
boss.

Hope this is useful to you. Let us know.

rms

 

[Guest]

Actually, I think the source of the e-mails are common
SPAM.

To be more specific about the TOs and FROMs:

The FROMs are usually some address at yahoo or hotmail or
some such. (Yes, I'll probably get around to doing some
SPAM filtering and catching most of those...)

The TOs are often some old email address that belonged to
a former employee. Or some generic sales@ or whatever...

The issue isn't really that I can't prove that BCCed
messages don't show the recipient. I only have to send a
message and BCC him on it. The issue is that if someone
receives a message, the address that it was sent to that
caused it to show up in his (or my, or anyone's) inbox
SHOULD to be revealed. If for no other reason than so I
can see which of the variants of the correct spelling of
my name that I have set up as valid SMTP addresses on my
Exchange account was used....

 

[Brian Tillman]

If UserA sends and e-mail to UserB and BCCs UserC, then
UserC get's an e-mail in their box. This e-mail says it
is from UserA and that it is to UserB. UserC cannot
reveal the BCC field for the email to see his name and is
convinced that there is a problem with the Exchange setup
and that he is getting mail that is not intended for him.
Since UserC is my boss, I have a problem. Is this, in
fact, normal behaviour for Outlook 2003,

It's normal behavior for ALL mail clients, not just Outlook. The recipient
address of a message has nothing whatsoever to do with what shows in the
"To" or "Cc" fields.

 

[Brian Tillman]

The issue isn't really that I can't prove that BCCed
messages don't show the recipient. I only have to send a
message and BCC him on it. The issue is that if someone
receives a message, the address that it was sent to that
caused it to show up in his (or my, or anyone's) inbox
SHOULD to be revealed.

The SMTP standards just weren't written that way. For example, let's
consider postal mail. Let's say that you're rich and have a butler. A
letter arrives at your domicile. The address on the envelope is how the
postal service was able to determine that you were to receive it. Let's say
it was addressed to "Joe", and that's your name. Let's also say the
sender's salutation in the letter says "Dear Frank". The butler accepts the
letter from the postal carrier, opens the envelope, removes the message and
places the letter (sans envelope) in your Inbox. You pick it up and read it
and see it says "Dear Frank". Wait! You're not Frank, yet you received the
message. You can't determine how you got the message because the butler
removed the envelope and threw it away.

In some ways, that's how SMTP mail works. The SMTP envelope contains a
"sender" address (which in the case of SPAM is almost always bogus) and a
"recipient address". That's all it contains and that's all it needs to
deliver the message. What follows the envelope is, as far as the mail
routers are concerned, just data and the mail routers simply don't care what
the data portion contains. Yet that data contains the "From", "To", "Cc",
"Date", "Subject", and other headers, all of which can be whatever the
sender wishes them to be, with no requirement that they have anything to do
with reality. Your mail program, however, believes them and displays them
as being who the message came from, who should receive it, when it was
received, and about which topic it concerns. That's one of the reasons why
junk mail can be hard to trace.