Subject: hiding a distribution list

From: "Richard G. Roberto" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1996 11:39:30 -0400 (EDT)

Can anyone explain this to me?  I checked the pine archives
and I took tha advise of past posts.  I put a bogus entry in
the To: field like so:

distribution list :;
                  ^^ here's the magical incantaion, right?

and then added recipients to the Lcc: field.  It seems that
it made it out to the recipient sites OK, but they couldn't
deal with the To: user supplied (i.e. the incantation).
What did I do wrong?  What does that ":;" do anyway?  Where
can I read up on this in some detail?  By the way, I'm using
Pine3.94 precompiled Solaris 2.x binary.

Thanks in advance.

Richard G. Roberto
[email-masked]
201-739-2886 - whippany, nj

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Bear Stearns is not responsible for any recommendation, solicitation, offer or
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---

From: [email-masked] (Ido's )
Date: 14 Aug 1996 17:00:04 GMT

Richard G. Roberto ([email-masked]) wrote:
: 
: Can anyone explain this to me?  I checked the pine archives
: and I took tha advise of past posts.  I put a bogus entry in
: the To: field like so:
: 
: distribution list :;
:                   ^^ here's the magical incantaion, right?

If all you wanted to mail to a list of people and don't want everyone to
see the other mailing addresses you just put the names under Bcc:

: 
: and then added recipients to the Lcc: field.  It seems that
: it made it out to the recipient sites OK, but they couldn't
: deal with the To: user supplied (i.e. the incantation).
: What did I do wrong?  What does that ":;" do anyway?  Where
: can I read up on this in some detail?  By the way, I'm using
: Pine3.94 precompiled Solaris 2.x binary.
: 
: Thanks in advance.
: 
: Richard G. Roberto
: [email-masked]
: 201-739-2886 - whippany, nj
: 
: 
: --
: *******************************************************************************
: Bear Stearns is not responsible for any recommendation, solicitation, offer or
: agreement or any information about any transaction, customer account or account
: activity contained in this communication.
: *******************************************************************************

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+-------------------------------------------------+
        Carol and Haisam Ido <[email-masked]>
+-------------------------------------------------+

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From: Mike Brudenell <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 10:09:45 +0100 (BST)

> see the other mailing addresses you just put the names under Bcc:

Careful!  The whole point of the "magical incantation" is to avoid
problems with some delivery software.  In particular if the recipients are
only listed in the Cc and/or Bcc fields (ie, with no To field specified)
then some delivery software happily reveals the "hidden" list as a series
of "Apparently-To:" fields.

Having a To field along the lines of "List Name:;" is exactly right in
these circumstances.

However I seem to recall that the magical ":;" parsing fails if one has a
misconfigured sendmail.  Can anyone recall more details about this?

Cheers,

Mike Brudenell                                         <[email-masked]>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Computing Service, University of York, Heslington, York, YO1 5DD, UK
Tel: +44-1904-433811  FAX: +44-1904-433740  http://www.york.ac.uk/~pmb1/

---

From: Beth Peterson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 1996 15:05:45 -0500

I am assuming that you have read the other replies to this message.
Although I do not know exactly what the :; stands for and etc., but it does
work.  First of all DO NOT just put the list in the Bcc field as noted in
another reply.  A Bcc field does hide the list from anyone hows address is in
the To field but EVERYONE in the Bcc field will see everyone else in the Bcc
field unless you do put in the :; in the To field.  If you are using Lcc You
do not have to put anything into the To field.  When done correctly Pine
should automatically enter in the list name followed by the :; in the To field
for you.  This way when the people receive the message it will say:

		To: distribution list name
instead of:
		To: Undisclosed Recipients

Hope that helps a little.

|Can anyone explain this to me?  I checked the pine archives
|and I took tha advise of past posts.  I put a bogus entry in
|the To: field like so:
|
|distribution list :;
|                  ^^ here's the magical incantaion, right?
|
|and then added recipients to the Lcc: field.  It seems that
|it made it out to the recipient sites OK, but they couldn't
|deal with the To: user supplied (i.e. the incantation).
|What did I do wrong?  What does that ":;" do anyway?  Where
|can I read up on this in some detail?  By the way, I'm using
|Pine3.94 precompiled Solaris 2.x binary.
|
|Thanks in advance.
|
|Richard G. Roberto
[email-masked]
|201-739-2886 - whippany, nj
|
|
|--
|*******************************************************************************
|Bear Stearns is not responsible for any recommendation, solicitation, offer or
|agreement or any information about any transaction, customer account or account
|activity contained in this communication.
|*******************************************************************************
|
|

Beth Peterson
bethp@fnal
Physics Department

---

From: [email-masked] (Tim Mooney)
Date: 26 Aug 1996 00:52:26 -0500

In article <[email-masked]>,
> Hope that helps a little.

The procedure as described above and in the FAQ also does not work completely 
for me using pine 3.91 and sendmail 8.7.5.  We're still using 3.91 on our
main hosts until a later version of pine is more stable.

When I go through the procedure outlined in the FAQ and above (put :; in the
To: field and put the other recipients in the Bcc: field) I get:

1) the message is delivered to all the people in the Bcc: field, with a
To: field of

	: ;

or
	: ;@hostname.FQDN

the Bcc: field is (of course) not part of the delivered headers.

2) the message *also* bounces, and postmaster and I receive a copy, with
sendmail complaining:

   ----- Transcript of session follows -----
553 : ;... list:; syntax illegal for recipient addresses

If I leave the To: field blank, the message is delivered correctly, there is
no bounce, and the Bcc: field still is not part of the delivered headers.

Tim
-- 
Tim Mooney                              [email-masked]
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