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I Have Become an "Undisclose Recipient"

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  I Have Become an "Undisclose Recipient" croy <croy@spam.invalid.net> - 2025-04-27 11:00 -0700
    Re: I Have Become an "Undisclose Recipient" Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2025-04-27 19:07 +0100
    Re: I Have Become an "Undisclose Recipient" "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2025-04-27 20:24 +0200
    Re: I Have Become an "Undisclose Recipient" "David E. Ross" <nobody@nowhere.invalid> - 2025-04-27 13:00 -0700
    Re: I Have Become an "Undisclose Recipient" Laughing Policeman <invalid@invalid.net> - 2025-04-27 20:36 +0000
    Re: I Have Become an "Undisclose Recipient" VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2025-04-27 22:12 -0500
    Re: I Have Become an "Undisclose Recipient" croy <croy@spam.invalid.net> - 2025-04-28 11:12 -0700
      Re: I Have Become an "Undisclose Recipient" Frank Miller <miller@posteo.ee> - 2025-04-28 20:54 +0200
        Re: I Have Become an "Undisclose Recipient" croy <croy@spam.invalid.net> - 2025-04-28 16:52 -0700
          Re: I Have Become an "Undisclose Recipient" Frank Miller <miller@posteo.ee> - 2025-04-29 03:45 +0200
            Re: I Have Become an "Undisclose Recipient" NFN Smith <worldoff9908@gmail.com> - 2025-04-30 12:04 -0700

#16469 — I Have Become an "Undisclose Recipient"

When I look thru emails that I have received over the last decade, I see
the Recipient (me) is listed as "Undisclosed recipient".  I'm not sure when
this started, but I'm pretty sure it was after Thunderbird version 102.

I'm really tempted to revert to v102 (for a few reasons), but instructions
for doing so seem a bit daunting (as in, something I could really screw
up).

So... is there a setting somewhere that would make me, me again?

-- 
croy

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#16470

croy wrote:

> When I look thru emails that I have received over the last decade, I see
> the Recipient (me) is listed as "Undisclosed recipient". 
Do you belong to lots of mailing lists, where the list membership is 
kept private from other members?  Or receive lots of bcc: emails?

In those cases the to: address is set by the sender
to be "undisclosed-recipients"

Haven't you got *any* emails where you are addressed as the recipient?

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#16471

On 2025-04-27 20:00, croy wrote:
> When I look thru emails that I have received over the last decade, I see
> the Recipient (me) is listed as "Undisclosed recipient".  I'm not sure when
> this started, but I'm pretty sure it was after Thunderbird version 102.
> 
> I'm really tempted to revert to v102 (for a few reasons), but instructions
> for doing so seem a bit daunting (as in, something I could really screw
> up).
> 
> So... is there a setting somewhere that would make me, me again?

NO.

This is done by the sender of that email, not by anything on your side.

You can verify, if the email is locally stored, with a disk file viewer, 
or a plain text viewer or editor. Or just by pressing [ctrl][U] on that 
email.

-- 
Cheers, Carlos.

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#16472

On 4/27/2025 11:00 AM, croy wrote:
> When I look thru emails that I have received over the last decade, I see
> the Recipient (me) is listed as "Undisclosed recipient".  I'm not sure when
> this started, but I'm pretty sure it was after Thunderbird version 102.
> 
> I'm really tempted to revert to v102 (for a few reasons), but instructions
> for doing so seem a bit daunting (as in, something I could really screw
> up).
> 
> So... is there a setting somewhere that would make me, me again?
> 

It usually means your E-mail address was used with Bcc: instead to To:.
Thus, other recipients of the same message do not see your E-mail address.


-- 
David E. Ross
<http://www.rossde.com/>

President Trump wants all Palestinians to leave Gaza and
relocate elsewhere.  How many will he accept to relocate
in the United States?

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#16473

On 27/04/2025 19:00, croy wrote:
>
> So... is there a setting somewhere that would make me, me again?
>

Yes you can post your correct eMail address HERE and we can send you an 
email to make you real and give you your real name and eMail address.

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#16474

croy <croy@spam.invalid.net> wrote:

> When I look thru emails that I have received over the last decade, I see
> the Recipient (me) is listed as "Undisclosed recipient".  I'm not sure when
> this started, but I'm pretty sure it was after Thunderbird version 102.

That is what the *sender* put in the To or Cc header.  You were on a
mailing list.  It is rude to expose the e-mail addresses of other
recipients of a bulk mailing unless each recipient has granted
permission by the sender to expose their e-mail address (not likely).
However, many e-mail servers will reject outbound e-mails that have
blank To or Cc headers.  Some e-mail clients also do not allow blank To
or Cc headers in outbound messages.  So, something has to put in those
headers, like "Undisclosed recipient".  If the message is from a mailing
list, often the name of the mailing list is put in the To header, like
"To: Harry Potter Fan Club - East coast division", and the From might be
"From: Hogwarts Council".  An insulting sender could say "To: Dumbass at
Work".  The sender's client can put ANYTHING it wants in the
client-generated headers, like in the To and CC headers.  Whether the
sending mail server accepts it is another matter.

The To and CC headers are NOT used to address your e-mails to recipient.
Those are there for info to the users.  The e-mail client will aggregate
all recipients in the To, Cc, and Bcc *fields* in a new outbound e-mail
into one list of RCPT-TO commands, one for each recipient.  Your e-mail
client establishes a mail session with the server, sends a RCPT-TO
command for each recipient to the server, and then sends a DATA command
with the body of your message.  If you send your message to 10
recipients, your client issues 10 RCPT-TO commands followed by 1 DATA
command.  The server then sends a separate copy of DATA to each RCPT-TO.

Since the To and Cc headers do NOT actually specify where to route your
e-mails, you can put anything you want in those fields.  Depends on the
e-mail client you use.  Some bulk mailers will use bogus strings in the
To or Cc headers while using a mailing list to build the RCPT-TO command
list.  In fact, the client can specify a recipient that is not in a
RCPT-TO command.  *Clients* fill the To and CC headers, not the server.
That's why spammers can lie to whom they sent their turds.  They may
even put a recipient in the To header since few users define inbound
e-mail rules that filter out e-mails they sent to themself.  The spammer
looks like you sent yourself an e-mail, and you don't have a rule
looking for you sending to you.

The To and CC headers don't even need to contain e-mail addresses.  They
could have "Enlarge your penis", "Make millions", or "Undisclosed".
Those headers (added by the client) are NOT used to specify which
recipients get the e-mail.  It's the list of RCPT-TO commands from the
client to the server that specifies who are the recipients.

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#16475

On Sun, 27 Apr 2025 11:00:28 -0700, croy <croy@spam.invalid.net> wrote:

>When I look thru emails that I have received over the last decade, I see
>the Recipient (me) is listed as "Undisclosed recipient".  I'm not sure when
>this started, but I'm pretty sure it was after Thunderbird version 102.
>
>I'm really tempted to revert to v102 (for a few reasons), but instructions
>for doing so seem a bit daunting (as in, something I could really screw
>up).
>
>So... is there a setting somewhere that would make me, me again?

Thanks to all who responded.  I spent most of the morning trying to track
this down, and I finally got it (as in, dawn breaks over marblehead).  At
some point in time, I had made an entry in the Address Book of Thunderbird,
using the name of "Undisclosed Recipients", and my email address.  It
worked great, but I didn't expect TB to refer to the Address Book for the
Recipient info, instead of what was in the headers of the mail itself.
When I removed that AB entry, everything was well again, and I eventually
found that simply leaving the "To:" field blank would still allow me to
sent to multiple recipients by way of the "Bcc" field--TB automatically
inserts, "Undisclosed Recipients" in the "To:" field of the sent messages.

The only mystery remaining is, why was I only recently seeing this, when I
must have made that entry in the Address Book way back in some previous
version of TB--not that it matters.

-- 
croy
Wishing I were smarter....

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#16478

croy wrote:
[..snip..]
> Thanks to all who responded.  I spent most of the morning trying to track
> this down, and I finally got it (as in, dawn breaks over marblehead).  At
> some point in time, I had made an entry in the Address Book of Thunderbird,
> using the name of "Undisclosed Recipients", and my email address.  It
> worked great, but I didn't expect TB to refer to the Address Book for the
> Recipient info, instead of what was in the headers of the mail itself.

Check the display settings:
Settings - General - Reading & Display:
"Show only display name for people in my address book"

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#16482

On Mon, 28 Apr 2025 20:54:32 +0200, Frank Miller <miller@posteo.ee> wrote:

>Check the display settings:
>Settings - General - Reading & Display:
>"Show only display name for people in my address book"

Thanks Frank!  I don't know how many times I must have gone thru the
settings and missed that.

-- 
croy

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#16488

croy wrote:
> On Mon, 28 Apr 2025 20:54:32 +0200, Frank Miller <miller@posteo.ee> wrote:
> 
>>Check the display settings:
>>Settings - General - Reading & Display:
>>"Show only display name for people in my address book"
> 
> Thanks Frank!  I don't know how many times I must have gone thru the
> settings and missed that.

It's a stupid default setting for people who like to "chat".
I've never seen a reason to use it. The developers should set the default
to 'false' and bury that setting in the config editor.

Add this line to your user.js to prevent that in the future:
user_pref("mail.showCondensedAddresses", false);

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#16499

Frank Miller wrote:
>>> Check the display settings:
>>> Settings - General - Reading & Display:
>>> "Show only display name for people in my address book"

>> Thanks Frank!  I don't know how many times I must have gone thru the
>> settings and missed that.

> It's a stupid default setting for people who like to "chat".
> I've never seen a reason to use it. The developers should set the default
> to 'false' and bury that setting in the config editor.
> 
> Add this line to your user.js to prevent that in the future:
> user_pref("mail.showCondensedAddresses", false);

I agree that it's stupid, although it's not as bad as Outlook, where 
Microsoft makes it unreasonably difficult to derive a real address from 
a displayed name.

Apparently, the assumption is that a real address is "unfriendly" (and 
perhaps something that is disruptive for something like a mail merge), 
but it doesn't account for the possibility contacts that have more than 
one address, or people who have the same name.

I've had showCondensedAddresses set to false for years (preferences 
editor is fine, no need to force permanence to the user.js file, unless 
you want to do the entry by hand).

But a good reminder to share that with the users I support (where all of 
us have addresses on more than one domain, plus an external address).

Smith

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