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The following is a simple message header, the address label
of an email message. It only contains the most basic information
of an email message: who the message is from, to whom the message was
sent, possibly a subject line indicating what the message is about,
and the time-stamp of when the message was written.
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 19:30:34 -0500 (EST)
To: MindSpring Technical Support Desk support@mindspring.com
From: mailbox@mindspring.com
Subject: Reading Mail Headers
Cc: mailbox@mindspring.com
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 19:30:34 -0500(EST)
Like most basic email headers, this one is pretty self-explanatory. It
just indicates when the message was written. But what you may not
know is that the information in the
Date:
line is supplied by the time on the sender's
computer, which may or may not be set correctly. Also, the
Date:
line does not normally indicate when the message was sent,
but only when it was written. In this example,
the email message from which this header was taken was written on
Monday, February 24th 1997, at approximately 7:30pm Eastern Standard
Time (EST). The format of this line will vary depending on which
email client the sender uses to compose the message.
To: MindSpring Technical Support Desk<support@mindspring.com>
The
To:
line is used to indicate the primary person or persons
the mail message is intended for. Usually a name will precede the actual
address, though this is certainly not required. The
To:
line may also contain more than one address, each separated
by commas. In this case, the mail will be delivered to each address listed
in this line, as well as the
Cc:
line and the otherwise invisible
Bcc:
line (see Cc: and Bcc:) There really is no functional
difference between an address contained in the
Cc:
or
To:
lines of an email message.
From: mailbox@mindspring.com
The
From:
line indicates who the message is from. Pretty simple.
Subject: Reading Mail Headers
The
Subject:
line is used to provide a short description of what the
message is about.
Cc: mailbox@mindspring.com
The
Cc:
, or Carbon Copy, line of an email message is used to
list all of the people who were sent a copy of the mail message.
This line may contain one or more addresses, each separated by a comma.
Or, it may not contain anything at all. In this example, the
Cc:
line contains the same address as the
From:
-- I just wanted to send a copy of the mail to myself
for my own records.
(Bcc:)
If this message had been Bcc' d to another address,
you would not know it from the headers of the received message.
This is because Bcc stands for Blind Carbon Copy -- the mail server
actually removes this header line right before it delivers it. So
if you ever get a message delivered to your mailbox, but do not
see your address anywhere in either the
To:
or the
Cc:
lines, it was probably sent to you via a Blind Carbon
Copy. This is common way of sending mail to large numbers of recipients
without showing everyone who the message was actually sent to or
to keep the headers from scrolling on for pages and pages on your screen.
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