Comments on: “Reply-to-All” Exposes Blind Co-conspirators

By: rmf

rmf — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 17:07:46 +0000

I tested it out: you CAN know who was Bcc’d in an email, even if you were one of the Bcc members.
I don’t see why replying to all would invoke the bcc email addresses as well. What’s the point of having the option to bcc people if someone could just simply hit “reply to all” and see who was bcc’d? Ack.

By: jev

jev — Sat, 22 May 2010 01:22:30 +0000

Exactly, to the first part.

By: jev

jev — Sat, 22 May 2010 01:21:03 +0000

I just performed a test e-mail to see if my sisters “reply all” to my bcc e-mail gave them any reason to suspect that the e-mail was going out to the other sister and me. Well…it didn’t. It just went to me, the sender. I don’t know what the e-mail looked like to them, as far as “exposing” the bcc sender (aka me!) but as far as all the senders receiving a “reply to all” e-mail via an original blind copy, I don’t think we have to worry. If I’m wrong, I’d love for someone to help me understand this. Thanks!

By: T Riffick

T Riffick — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 13:44:56 +0000

I often receive emails re: urban legends, hate mongering against Islam with pictures labeled falsely etc. In the TO: column is the sender’s name along w/ “undisclosed recipients”. If I (after research on Snopes, etc) hit “reply all”, will the “undisclosed recipients” receive my email exposing the truth, or just the sender whose name I can see in the TO: box?

By: kathirvel

kathirvel — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 10:17:56 +0000

need advanced mailind tools contact thru my mail

By: Ken E

Ken E — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:39:08 +0000

Is there a method to see who all the addressees are when you receive an “undisclosed recipients” e mail, i.e. everyone has been BCC’d?

By: Itzy Sabo

Itzy Sabo — Fri, 09 May 2008 09:54:07 +0000

"why me": it sounds like it would have been better to have a face-to-face discussion with your employee. Email is not a good medium for some things, see Don’t write to me in that tone of voice!

By: why me?

why me? — Thu, 08 May 2008 18:55:48 +0000

what was I thinking? I’m somewhat new to my organization (been here about a year), having been hired in from outside. I recently sent an email to one of my employees asking why he didn’t trust me, stating we’re all in this together, along with the typical motivational, team-building comments.

As the email came about because of specific issues that needed to be addressed, I wanted my supervisor to be aware of it. So….I BCC’d him.

think about it…. a BCC on an email telling someone he needed to trust me! What was I thinking? Fortunately my supe didn’t ‘reply-to-all’. That would not have been pretty!

By: Faisal

Faisal — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 11:08:49 +0000

What a great discussion,

My boss sends emails to be with a different tone sometimes, like he is BCCing someone.

How can I find out who did he BCC??

By: Itzy Sabo

Itzy Sabo — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 17:10:39 +0000

Mix: Not unless one of the BCC recipients Replies-to-All by mistake.

By: Mix

Mix — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 15:49:37 +0000

hey everyone i got a Q… ” As a reciver of an e-mail, can i find out if the sender BCC anyone ?

By: Sunil Shah

Sunil Shah — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 14:59:23 +0000

How can stop my Exchange 2007 STOP delivering messages to persons listed in the BCC field ? This should ONLY apply to messages sent from within my domain. Thanks.

By: Four (or Five!) Reasons Why » …The “Reply All” Button Must Die

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 12:00:31 +0000

[...] Almost as bad a the BCC (or Blind Co-Conspirator), “reply all” creates a “cover your ass” culture. A single email filed [...]

By: Itzy Sabo

Itzy Sabo — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 04:51:31 +0000

Mark: I do not believe it is true for all cases. I am by no means an expert in the technical aspects of SMTP, but as far as I understand, a mail server that receives a message for delivery, will receive a list of recipients. So within your company, your mail server will know who all the recipients are, including the BCC recipients. However, if you receive a message from outside your network, your mail server will only know about the recipients it was asked to distribute the message to, i.e. those within your company. Other mail servers will have been asked to distribute the message to the recipients not under control of your mail server.

Whether or not I am correct, most people cannot access the mail server’s logs to see how specific messages were handled — this itself would be considered a breach of security.

By: palehorse

palehorse — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 18:07:24 +0000

UGH! I was just bit by this one. I read this article quite a while ago and have since changed my habits however; a co-worker uses BCC to the point of annoyance. I frequently get BCC’d on emails contents that leave me scratching my head due to the lack of context. Upon returning from vacation as I was sorting through my week of email I accidentally replied-to-all to ask him what the email was about. Ugh!

Now to fix the problem… *sigh*

By: Mark Smalley

Mark Smalley — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 16:57:07 +0000

Thanks Itszy….I found this on line….wuold this apply for a work server? …does this ring true?
“….Note there is a potential security flaw in the BCC feature. According to the conventions of the SMTP protocol, all addresses, including BCC addresses, are included in every email as it is sent over the Internet. The BCC addresses are stripped off blind copy email only at the destination email server. Therefore, if the addressee controls their email server or can access it, they could examine the BCC addresses on every email they receive.

By: Itzy Sabo

Itzy Sabo — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 10:22:24 +0000

Mark: there’s no way to know even whether BCC was used, unless you yourself are a BCC recipient. Even then, you cannot know if you were the only BCC recipient.

By: Mark Smalley

Mark Smalley — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 20:57:38 +0000

HI….I was bcc’d on an e-mail and was wondering if it is at all possible to determine who else…not an address really…just if there was another recipient besides myself..?

By: Vicki Davis

Vicki Davis — Tue, 22 May 2007 14:32:30 +0000

Yes, this can be embarassing and may damage relationships, diminish trust, create more work and reduce your ability to make decisions. It’s time to get human again. Replace the screen-time with face time.

By: Itzy Sabo

Itzy Sabo — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 18:22:54 +0000

Vanessa: unfortunately, when you reply-to-all, you are only replying to the people who are publicly associated with the original message. Your email program is totally unaware of who received a BCC copy, or even whether anyone at all was BCC’ed on the message. You’ll have to find another way to get your side of the story across. How about an anonymous blog? ;-) (WARNING – be very careful if you take the blog route – if it becomes too popular, and you make a careless mistake, you could end up getting found out…)