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I was shocked to receive receive an email in my gmail inbox, with totally no mention of my email address in to, cc, or bcc.

Is this something to be worried about?

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This is how BCC works!!!

BCC = Blind Carbon Copy = you don't see that you (or another BCC recipient) is a recipent. Your address is not written on the letter, only on the envelope (ie. given to the MTA).

Thanks. I tested in gmail with a bcc address and it did show my address as included in bcc. hence the confusion.

Your test doesn't work because as a sender, your mail program stores the mail including the BCC field. You need at least some other email adress in order to learn by experimenting hwo BCC works :-)

Relevant section of the RFC: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5322#section-3.6.3

If memory serves me correctly, my email address has always been displayed in the BCC field whenever I've received such an email.

In my experience, it sometimes shows there and sometimes doesn't.

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