At 12:35 2003-11-11 -0500, Birl wrote:
Alright, I understand that. However, if the 'list' is an email alias, is
it really a bcc? I guess the answer doesnt matter much as this is going
off topic.
Excepting how the ORIGINATING mail server sees the message submission,
there is absolutely no difference in how the message is passed off to the
recipient mail servers.
IF THE ADDRESS DOES NOT APPEAR IN THE TO: OR CC: FIELDS ON THE COPY WHICH
YOU RECEIVE, THE MESSAGE IS QUITE OBVIOUSLY ADDRESSED TO YOU IN THE BLIND.
Excepting for mailing lists where each individual recipient is mailed out
to, with THEIR address in the To: field (more like an old fashioned "mail
merge"), mailing lists / mail aliases deliver as Bcc, whether you think the
original message had a Bcc: header or not.
MOST mailing lists can be identified from some additional headers they
stuff in the message. However if someone simply does (and this IS
oversimplified):
:0
* ^To:.*someaddress
! addr1,addr2,addr3
each of the recipients will receive a message devoid of anything which
specifically identifies them or a "list-like" (re-)sender. THe original
delivery mechanism here didn't insert a Bcc: line, but rather invoked the
MTA with the addresses provided on the commandline, which are taken as
explicit recipients (AND the message IS NOT delivered to the addresses seen
in the headers, which are just for show).
I could for instance, compose a message which says it's being delivered to
your boss and to you, and discuss some really rotten secret about your
personal life which you'd rather your boss didn't know about right now, but
sending it like so:
sendmail youraddress < messagefile
Will deliver it just to you. YOU would see your boss' address in the To:
field and have a fit, possibly sending him a followup apologizing that he
had to hear the news about you, BOTH of his daughters, and what you did
with them at the company winter retreat this way... and therefore telling
him yourself (or by overquoting the message which you THOUGHT he'd already
received), because he never really was a recipient of the message.
Moral: don't trust headers. In the end, you received the message, and that
means apparently you were addressed - if not visibly, then obviously in the
blind.
To the MTA, headers are actually just a part of the message body - while
the MTA adds some stuff (Received: for instance), and may check a field or
two for validity (existing Date and Message-ID, domain in From:, etc), it
rarely takes action on any of the data (short of deliberatley written filters).
---
Sean B. Straw / Professional Software Engineering
Procmail disclaimer: <http://www.professional.org/procmail/disclaimer.html>
Please DO NOT carbon me on list replies. I'll get my copy from the list.
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