Bcc emails

Factual Questions
1

When you send an email and Bcc it to someone, is the information about the Bcc carried anywhere in the header?

Ie, if x sends an email to y, and bccs it to z, can y ever find out (with extra software/hacking/whatever) that z also received this?

2

It’s not meant to be visible. Most headers contain no information about the BCCs whatsoever. However, it can happen under certain circumstances: I’ve seen BCC information in the header of an email sent to hotmail. This was about a year ago. I can’t remember the source of the mail. Maybe someone else can expand.

[irrelevant hijack] (BTW, kudos to the UAE for asking Saddam to step down - but that’s another thread) [/irrelevant hijack]

3

Thanks! The reason I asked was because I had a feeling that if you do a “Reply All” to an email, it will also reply to the people Bcc’d, and you might not realise it was also going to them.

Eg:
x -> Email to: y, w, v “Management is introducing new rules”
bcc z

y -> Reply to:All x,w,v “Management z is such a cock”
bcc z [without realising it]

I have a feeling this has happened to me in the past, that I received an email unintentionally after someone reply-all’d to an email I was bcc’d on. (Luckily nothing about me being a cock or otherwise!)

4

I’m almost 100% certain that reply-all won’t reply to the people BCCed, AFAIK. Will test and get back to you.

5

Nah, it’s fine.

Reply-all is a dangerous beast. A few years ago I dealt with a kook who was emailing info@blabla.com to complain about my company website, with the words “Do you want to deal with this nutter, or shall I?” Unfortunately I hit reply-all to get the info@ address up, but didn’t delete the kook’s email address. Luckily there was no comeback.

6

Thanks jjimm. I must have imagined it that time when it happened. Like you say, Reply All can be dangerous though!

The most cringeworthy thing I see is people who haven’t worked out how to hide their email groups, so when the email arrives (particularly from PR companies) you can see the addressed of the other three or four hundred people on their mailing list.