Helping people with computers... one answer at a time.
The list of BCCed recipients is not included in emails, so there is no way of determining if and who else the email was sent to.
I want find the list of "undisclosed recipients" of the email I've received in Outlook. Is there any way?
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"Undisclosed recipients" is often placed in the "To:" line by some mailers when the email being sent has no entries in the "To:" or "Cc:" lines. The sender has used the "Bcc:" feature of email to send the email to one or more people, without revealing who they are.
So, how do you find out who they are?
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You don't.
That's what "undisclosed" means. The information about who the email was sent to is not included in the email. There is simply no way of determining if it was sent to anyone else and if so, who.
Now, to be complete, I do recall hearing about some old email programs – and we're talking ten or twenty years ago – that got the whole concept of Bcc: and undisclosed recipients wrong. They included the BCCed recipients in headers that everyone could read if they knew how. But that was a serious bug and has long since been resolved.
Today's email programs simply don't disclose undisclosed recipients.
It would be wrong to do so.
Article C2227 - November 19, 2004
Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he
was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed.
After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers
to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.
"Today's email programs simply don't disclose "undisclosed recipients".
It would be wrong to do so."
But it is perfectly acceptable for me to constantly receive mail that doesn't have my email address shown, so therefore must be bcc'd? I don't agree with blinding; I can't imagine it being used, proportionally, very much when compared to spammers. But oh well. I guess it's worth it for those couple of people who do use it for real purposes.
Something that would be good, is if the big providers like gmail were to create an option to block incoming emails that were bcc'd to a user, unless they come from a trusted source (whitelisted)
Posted by: Joseph Rothwell at December 16, 2011 11:56 PM.
@Joseph
Posted by: Mark J at December 17, 2011 6:00 AMBCC has a very useful purpose. It actually reduces spam. If BCC didn't exist, it wouldn't in any way limit spam.
How does using BCC help reduce spam?
Quote - It would be wrong to do so.
Unquote!
Why? How does such a statement apply to people like us here in Australia...Remember you have made this statement to the WORLD. There is NO general right to privacy in Australia and using a BCC is a reverse denial in that the user is impossing their own privacy with NO right to do so !!
Posted by: Henry at January 5, 2012 11:25 PM@Henry
Posted by: Mark J at January 6, 2012 1:27 AMLeo isn't talking about legalities, he just saying that if a program says it will hide the recipients' email addresses, it will do what it says.
Leo, you're absolutely right about not being able to see who the other BCC recipients of an email are; but if you have Outlook Express and you want to see who you sent your BCC message to, go to "Sent Items" and right click "Properties". Then select "Details". The names (and addresses) of all your BCC 's are displayed. No problem. I don't know about other programs.
Posted by: Idee at May 18, 2012 10:10 AM