[RESOLVED] I use phpmailer and php mail() to send bcc email

[rafhelp]

I am mr A

I send a message to Mr B

I also add BCC to Mr C and Mr D

mr B gets a message and it is addressed to him

Mr C and Mr D receive the same message BUT they are addressed to mr B and they see Mr B's address!

So how do i send BCC emails in such a way so that they are addresses to each individual recepient and not the "TO" email.

is there any advanced feature in the mail or phpmailer scripts??

[techgnome]

you need to add all of the addresses to the BCC ...
that's what the B is for... it's a Blind Courtesy Copy .... means that no one can see who got it as a result of the BCC.

-tg

[rafhelp]

i know that. thanks but you misunderstood.

When a person in the BCC gets an email from me, where it says
" TO: mr x@yahoo.co.uk"

I want that email to show THEIR email address NOT the email address of someone else

[Nightwalker83]

That sounds suspicious! Why do you want to do that?

[techgnome]

but you didn't send it TO them.... you sent it TO someone else, with them in the BCC.... if you don't want them to see who it went to, then don't put any names/addresses in the TO, and just put them all in the BCC.

Some systems won't send unless there's an address in the TO field... in this case I've seen people send it to themselves (so the TO & FROM are the same) and then put all the recipients into the BCC.

another alternative is to start a loop and send the email one at a time, replacing the TO address on each loop. Downside of this is that some SMTP servers will see this as spamming and will mark the email as such on its way out.


Nightwalker - it's a common practice, especially where you're sending out newsletters where you don't want to reveal your entire list. I get a lot of newsletters this way.

-tg

[rafhelp]

yes youre right, people always assume the worst when it comes to send bulk emails. People in business send bulk emails like every day. Its not illegal.

Il try sending with blank TO field. im not too keen on sending to myself, just fill my inbox up, but it might be the best thing

[Nightwalker83]

Nightwalker - it's a common practice, especially where you're sending out newsletters where you don't want to reveal your entire list. I get a lot of newsletters this way.

I know about the BCC and CC I was confused about:

So how do i send BCC emails in such a way so that they are addresses to each individual recepient and not the "TO" email.

I think I was just getting myself confused ask to what the original post was talking about.

[techgnome]

yeah. it's not completely clear is it? I only got it because I've done this before....
What he was doing is sending emails like this:

FROM: Me
TO: A
BCC: B, C, D, E


When A gets the email it looks like it went to A and only A.
When B gets the email B can see that A also got it... but no one else...
Same with C and so on.

What the OP wants is that when A gets the email, it comes TO A ... when B gets the email it comes TO B .... so that B doesn't see that A also go it... or C.

The short answer is that the only way to hide the other recipients is to but all of the addresses in BCC, and leave TO blank. Now when the recipients get it, it looks like only they got the email... even though it shows up in the BCC, not TO.

-tg

[Nightwalker83]

yeah. it's not completely clear is it? I only got it because I've done this before....
What he was doing is sending emails like this:

FROM: Me
TO: A
BCC: B, C, D, E

I was thinking he wanted to use a variable to changed the address in the "TO" field to that of one in the "BCC" field. He mentioned in his original post that he knows about "BCC" field. Also, to overcome the situations where the email service complains about no email address in the "TO" field he could just but his email address.

[rafhelp]

leaving "to" field blank when using php mail works fine. thanks guys.