Hiding Group Email Addresses

[KIR]

Using OE6, XP Home SP3

I created an email group with about 30 names in it with the group name REC.
When I send an email to the group I entered the group name REC in the TO:
column. how can I hide the addresses of all 30 from showing in the TO:
column for each recipient? People in the group are complaining about this.
Thanks.

Ken

--

[VanguardLH]

Put your own e-mail address in the To header. You can even create a
special contact for yourself with a special name, like "REC".

Put the recipients in the BCC field when composing a new e-mail. I say
"field" and not "header" because the header section of your outbound
e-mail will NOT have a BCC *header*. It is unlikely that you have
permission from all the recipients to divulge their e-mail address to
other recipients. Be polite. Hide their e-mail addresses in the BCC
header.

When you send to an SMTP mail server, your client compiles a list of
recipients from the To, CC, and BCC fields. From that aggregate list,
each recipient is specified separately in a RCPT-TO command that your
client sends to the server. The server users that list to determine
where each separate copy of your e-mail will get delivered. Recipients
never get to see those RCPT-TO commands. They only see what is in the
To and CC headers. They don't get to see what was in the BCC header
because that was used only on your end. Your client should never
include the BCC header in the header portion of the outbound e-mails.
The server should also strip out any BCC header in case the sender is
using a crappy client that neglected to omit the BCC header. The
recipient's copy of your e-mail should never contain a BCC header.

When you use the BCC field, the recipient never see what was listed
there. It was never included in your message. They will only see what
recipients are in the To and CC headers. Well, since you used your own
e-mail address (or a name for it) then that's what they see. If you
want a mailing to be identified as such, use a name for your contact
record (pointing to yourself) that helps the recipients know it's a
mailing or newsletter to which they've subscribed. Because you are
using a dummy entry in the To/CC headers, and since you probably don't
need to send yourself a copy, you can define a filter that looks for
e-mails sent by yourself and to yourself to move them into the Deleted
Items folder or permanently discard them. After all, do you really send
yourself your own e-mails?

You might run into problems with your sending mail server due to the
number of recipients specified for a message. It doesn't matter if they
are listed in part in the To, CC, and Bcc headers. As noted above, the
sending mail server doesn't care about those headers. It see the
aggregate list of recipients by the total number of RCPT-TO commands you
sent to it. Some e-mail providers, especially for *personal* use
service tiers, will restrict the maximum number of recipients. Some
limit the max recipients to 50 but I've seen some limit it to 20. So
sending to 30 recipients could result in either only some recipients
getting your message or your message getting rejected by your sending
mail server. You'll have to find out what are the anti-abuse/anti-spam
quotas employed by your choice of e-mail service provider.

Outlook can be used with the MailMerge feature in Microsoft Office. It
integrates with Word and Excel to support mailing lists and template
messages. This let you compile a list of recipients, compose a template
message that might have optional variables to customize the message to
each recipient, and would issue a separate e-mail through Outlook for
each recipient. That way, each copy of your e-mail showed only one
recipient. They may not realize they are getting bulk e-mail sent by
you to many others because they see it was addressed to only them.
MailMerge is a feature NOT available with Outlook EXPRESS which is a
standalone program.

I have seen (but never used so don't remember them by name) where you
can get mailing list programs (some were free). This was akin to
MailMerge in letting you compile and maintain a list of recipients,
compose a template message, and send a separate copy to each recipient.
Each recipient only saw their name in the To/CC headers so it looks like
they were the only recipient. One of the problems I've seen with the
low-grade mailing programs is they spew as fast as your e-mail client
can issue e-mails. You can run into an anti-abuse/anti-spam quota at
your e-mail provider that limits how many e-mails per minute you are
allowed to send or how many e-mail sessions per minute you are allowed
to establish. The better mailers let you specify how many e-mails to
send as fast as possible, how long to wait between them, how to split up
a long list into multiple mailing sessions (since some e-mail providers
also have quotas as to how many e-mails you send in a 24-hour period),
and other regulating parameters to prevent hitting anti-abuse quotas.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/E-mail/Mailinglist/
(I didn't bother to look at any of these. Have no interest in them.)

[Twayne]

In news:hJHOs.183948$2x2....@newsfe01.iad,
KIR <ki...@dslextreme.com> typed:

+1 for Vanguard

[KIR]

Thanks for your assistance. Following your advice I entered my email address
in the TO field and REC (name of the group) in the BCC field. Apparently my
message was successfully sent to all 30 with only my address showing or
visible to any recipient, and that's what I was trying to accomplish. I
prefer using OE and since I don't seem to have ISP problems everything is
just fine now. Thanks again.

Ken

"VanguardLH" <V...@nguard.LH> wrote in message
news:keh51n$k3r$1...@news.albasani.net...