On Fri, 12 Dec 1997, Chuq Von Rospach wrote:
> If someone Bcc:s a mailing list, it's not at all obvious to many users
> 9and in some mail clients, impossible to find out) where the mail came
> from. And thinking about it, it's arguable whether it's "okay" to allow
> Bcc to a mail list. I see lots of opportunity for confusion,
> misdirection, and minor shenanigans.
That depends on the list; in many cases it's appropriate.
> So, would it be reasonable for mail list software to coerce a Bcc: of a
> list to a CC: in the header? At least then it'd be listed in the mail
> headers where a user will see it. I don't see any real negatives to it,
> but perhaps I'm missing something.
I think header munging is generally evil, and it would not be good
at all to change Bcc's to be Cc's.
Better solutions IMO would be:
1. Hack the list processor to reject any submissions which don't
have the list address present in either the 'To' or 'Cc' header.
(send an autoresponse saying "sorry, this list doesn't accept
Bcc's; please re-send your message.)
2. Accept the Bcc'd message, but munge the *body* of the message to
say "Note: this message was Bcc'd to the list." (Insert a paragraph
at the beginning or whatever, and explain it in whatever way makes
the most sense to your subscribers.)
In either case, this should be a configurable option on a list-by-
list basis; some lists may wish to accept Bcc'd messages without
any munging at all. (Several lists I use accept Bcc's, and even
encourage them in many cases.)
It is reasonable to set a "no Bcc's" policy for certain lists, but
if that is the policy, it would be better to enforce it using my
suggestion #1 above, and not by munging the headers.
Gerald
--
Gerald Oskoboiny
<gerald@impressive.net>
http://impressive.net/people/gerald/
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