Importing Mails without "to" header

[Phil Chambers]

On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 11:12:02 -0500 Joseph Brennan <brennan at columbia.edu> wrote:

> 
> > Situation: an old user has a mail in his account, that was sent _only_ to
> > bcc:  People, so in "to:" you will only find "<undisclosed recipients>".
> 
> Check what is really in the message.  Some mail programs display the
> null address in modified form.
> 
> This is valid:         To: undisclosed recipients :;
> This is not:           To: <undisclosed recipients>
> 

I would say that the former is not actually valid, though the syntax looks 
correct. RFC2822 section 3.6.3 says that To:, Cc: and Bcc: must contain at 
least one address. The above does not contain an address.  None of the three is 
required, so if there is to be no recipient address in the header, the To: and 
Cc: lines should be absent.  (If I remember correctly, RFC822 did require 
either To: or Cc: to be present.)

Phil.
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Phil Chambers (postmaster at exeter.ac.uk)
University of Exeter