Let me just make sure I'm understanding. More out of curiosity. I understand that functionally, I can't reply you other Bcc recipients.
I think of an email as being a single text file that contains headers at the top that tell the mail servers what to do, or how to handle the file, and where to send it. If I send an email with Bcc addresses, I assume that simply means that among all the headers, there's now one called Bcc with some addresses following it.
The point is, at some point along the chain, someone owns an email server that's receiving the text file with the Bcc header info still intact. Can the final recipients ever own that email server and gain access to the Bcc info? (Like a large corporation?)
Whose server is responsible for stripping the Bcc header and Bcc addresses?
And what prevents that process from being subverted?
I realize this isn't a question about Entourage functionality. Just thought someone on the list might understand how this all works.
Thanks, Doug
No Server ever sees the Bcc Header. It is stripped by the MUA (Mail User Agent - ie: Entourage) prior to submission. The process is the following:
1) The User creates the message with To/Cc/Bcc headers.
2) The MUA connects to the SMTP Server to "Send" the message.
3) The MUA uses the address in the From Header to say "My Address is xxx" to the SMTP Server.
4) The MUA uses the combined contents of To/Cc/Bcc Headers to be the "yyy" in the request "Please send a copy of the message to these Addresses yyy" which it makes to the SMTP Server.
5) The MUA then sends the message including the Headers but omitting the Bcc header to the SMTP Server as the zzz in "Here is the text of the message which I want you to deliver - zzz".
Note that the SMTP Server does NOT look at the To/From/Cc (remember it never gets a copy of the Bcc header) headers for delivery information. The Message itself is treated as a unit since the needed info is supplied in steps 3 and 4 above.
The SMTP Server "sees" the same information as is delivered to the recipients (ie: Only the To and Cc Headers) so it is not possible to tell who got a copy due to being on the Bcc Header (unless you are such a recipient and can tell since your address does not appear in a To or Cc header - This still does not tell you who else was in the Bcc header).
Mailing lists work the same way (at least conceptually) since all the subscribers are effectively Bcc'ed the echoed message. The echoed message gets sent to every subscriber (step 5) while the subscription list is used in Step 4 (the subscription list is never addded to the actual forwarded message).
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