How do I see the "Undisclosed recipients" on an email I sent?

Question:

I understand “undisclosed recipients” being blocked from the person
receiving the message, but is there a way to find out who I sent a message to
that shows only undisclosed recipients? I’m using Thunderbird and Gmail.

In this excerpt from
Answercast #27, I look at the way various email programs either reveal or
hide a list of undisclosed recipients.

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Undisclosed recipients

I honestly don’t know about both Thunderbird or Gmail. It really varies depending on the program.

I have an article on the topic, “How do I find the list of Bcc’ed recipients in outgoing mail?”

The thing to do is actually very simple. Go to the Sent mail folder in your email program. In the Sent mail folder, open up one of the messages that you had bcc’ed recipients on.

Look at the headers

Make sure that all of the headers are visible. I know that Thunderbird only shows a subset of the available headers by default. You may need to look at All Headers. Or you could even use Thunderbird’s View Source option to take a look at the actual source for the message.

It is very possible that the email program will show you exactly who the message was bcc’ed to – who the undisclosed recipients were.

Sometimes, it’s hidden

Unfortunately, it’s also equally possible that the information is not there.

Many email programs simply strip that information off before it is actually placed in your sent mail. In other words, there’s no way to find out who you bcc’ed on an outgoing email in some email programs.

The bottom line is to simply take a look at the message in your Sent folder. If the information is there, it should be displayed.

End of Answercast #27. Back to – Audio Segment

4 comments on “How do I see the "Undisclosed recipients" on an email I sent?”

A friend of mine {email address removed} has a very hard time of late, he cannot send attachments because they get stripped after leaving his computer . Any help?

I’ve been sending email to friends for years. Now I’m confused. What are ” undisclosed recipients”? i thought email only goes to the people or person you send it to? Why would it go anywhere else? and to who?

@John
When sending an email, if you put an email address in the BCC field instead of the To: or CC: fields, any reference to that email address are stripped from that email when it is sent. In other words, BCC: means the other recipients of that same email don’t know who else received it.

@John,
I don’t think the article mentions it, but BCC means “Blind Carbon Copy”.

When you CC someone, everyone in the TO: and CC: fields get to see all the other email addresses in the TO: and CC: fields. Makes sense, nothing is hidden. The normal situation is: all your recipients get to see whom you sent your email to.

But when you BCC someone, no one in the TO: and CC: fields gets to see the email addresses who’ve been BCC’d. So, the BCC addresses remain hidden to the other recipients. It’s a bit sneaky, sure, but it has many legitimate uses.

The problem Leo is addressing is: sometimes you (the sender) forget whom you’ve BCC’d the email to, and unless your Sent folder saves the BCC list (some don’t do this), there may be no way of going back to a previously sent email and finding the BCC recipients.

How do I see the "Undisclosed recipients" on an email I sent?

Undisclosed recipients

Look at the headers

Sometimes, it’s hidden

Do this

4 comments on “How do I see the "Undisclosed recipients" on an email I sent?”

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