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I received an email without me in to, cc or bcc. How is this possible?
- lewisjoe 5y agoI was shocked to receive receive an email in my gmail inbox, with totally no mention of my email address in to, cc, or bcc. Is this something to be worried about?
- informatimago 5y agoThis is how BCC works!!! BCC = Blind Carbon Copy = you don't see that you (or another BCC recipient) is a recipent. Your address is not written on the letter, only on the envelope (ie. given to the MTA).
- lewisjoe 5y agoThanks. I tested in gmail with a bcc address and it did show my address as included in bcc. hence the confusion.
- ktpsns 5y agoYour test doesn't work because as a sender, your mail program stores the mail including the BCC field. You need at least some other email adress in order to learn by experimenting hwo BCC works :-)
- Animux 5y agoRelevant section of the RFC: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5322#section-3.6.3 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5322#section-3.6.3
- jjulius 5y agoIf memory serves me correctly, my email address has always been displayed in the BCC field whenever I've received such an email.
- danaris 5y agoIn my experience, it sometimes shows there and sometimes doesn't.
- elmerfud 5y agoNo. The cc field and BCC field and many other common fields are supplied in the DATA part of sending an email are not required. If you look up how to send an email with telnet you'll see how this is possible for you to get this message.
- saba2008 5y agoActual delivery address is part of SMTP envelope, which is not part of delivered mail. While it usually correlates with headers in actual message, it is not required (that's how BCC works). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Mail_Transfer_Protocol#SMTP_transport_example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Mail_Transfer_Protocol#... See lines with 'RCTP TO'. That's where your address was.
- pgn674 5y agoAre there any (web) mail providers which will show you the SMTP envelope data along with the message headers? I have multiple addresses ending up in one inbox, and I'd like to see what RCPT TO the sender used.
- saba2008 5y agoFastmail does put envelope address into 'X-Delivered-to' header, GMail puts it into 'Delivered-To'.
- hvdijk 5y agoYou obscured your own e-mail address, but left the other e-mail addresses intact. Don't assume that these all belong to the spammer: spammers often use harvested e-mail addresses from mailing lists, data leaks, but also pastebins such as this one, etc. to appear legitimate, and the spammer's use of these e-mail addresses often results in those getting spamed as well, e.g. with bounce messages. Please don't make things worse by putting those e-mail addresses anywhere public.
- WarOnPrivacy 5y agoI think he left it on line 46 but isn't responding to the thread any longer.
- WarOnPrivacy 5y agoWhose email address is on Line 46?
- the_third_wave 5y agoTry this: $ telnet mail.example.org 587 Trying 192.168.1.52... Connected to mail.example.org. Escape character is '^]'. 220 'mail.example.org' ESMTP Exim 4.92 Mon, 31 May 2021 17:30:49 +0200 mail from: father_christmas@northpole.no 250 OK rcpt to: your_mail_address_here@your_mail_host_here 250 Accepted data 354 Enter message, ending with "." on a line by itself This message will not show a TO address but it will still arrive... . 250 OK id=1lnjuC-0003xa-5H quit 221 'mail.example.org' closing connection Connection closed by foreign host. Now check your mail box: Return-path: <father_christmas@northpole.no> Envelope-to: your_mail_address_here@your_mail_host_here Delivery-date: Mon, 31 May 2021 17:32:59 +0200 Received: from session.example.org ([192.168.1.53]) by 'mail.example.org' with smtp (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from <father_christmas@northpole.no>) id 1lnjuC-0003xa-5H for your_mail_address_here@your_mail_host_here; Mon, 31 May 2021 17:32:59 +0200 Message-Id: <E1lnjuC-0003xa-5H@'mail.example.org'> From: father_christmas@northpole.no Date: Mon, 31 May 2021 17:32:59 +0200 This message will not show a TO address but it will still arrive... That's is, no subject header, no TO header, no nothing but the message still arrives since all that is needed is a sender (mail from:), a recipient (rcpt to:) and some content (data followed by an line containing nothing but a period)
- compsciphd 5y agoand if it had all normal headers, it just be as if you were BCCd (cause its exactly how BCC works!)
- the_third_wave 5y agoAll headers including a potentially nonsensical TO-address - in other words don't go by the TO-address, check the "Envelope-to:" instead which your MDA or MUA should have inserted.
- pgn674 5y agoI don't think I've seen any web mail providers that put RCPT TO into an Envelope-to header like that. Have I just been missing it, or using the wrong providers?
- compsciphd 5y agowhat does "not in bcc" even mean? of course you will never see yourself in a bcc.