php imap: can't see actual recipient if bcc

Question

I'm working with PHP IMAP functions to poll an inbox and process the emails. Sometimes the emails are received via bcc -- this email was bcc'd by the sender. I need to be able to retrieve the actual email bcc'd -- but imap_fetchheader and imap_rfc822_parse_headers don't provide that if the recipient is bcc'd (even though it's in the return spec).

The issue is that I'm using plus addressing (myemail+value@domain.com) as part of my script, so it's not sufficient to know the email landed in my inbox -- I need to know the specific version of the address it was emailed to.

I understand the whole purpose of bcc is to be hidden. But I would think that there should be something in the header of the bcc-recipient to indicate the email was sent to them.

Answer 1

The "bcc address" that message is sent to is not part of the message itself, it is part of the message exchange protocol. It is used on the protocol level of smtp whilst handing over the message to the receiving server. The content that is handed over, so the message payload itself, is something different. There is no way to read that address from a received message by means of a protocol like imap4 or pop3 . You'd have to scan and parse the smtp servers log files for that.

You can easily check that yourself: open the source code of a message received. So the original, technical payload including everything. That looks ugly, but it shows all information actually contained in the data. You will not see any mentioning of "bcc" or a "bcc address" in there.