Adding information to an email that only the BCC recipient can see

Question

So, I am currently working on an project that involves outgoing emails being BCC'd to a certain account for archiving and record-keeping purposes.

The current proposal is that some sort of tag or code to the email so that they can be classified. It would be preferable if the client couldn't see this code.

Is there some way of including the tag/code in the email so that only the BCC recipient can see it?

Relevant information:

• Windows 10
• Outlook 2016
• Exchange server

I have already thought about sub-addressing, and it doesn't appear to be possible with the exchange server. If there is some way it could work, that'd be great.

The email can't simply be forwarded later - the idea is to make it a simple as possible for the end user.

EDIT: Additional question - could there possibly be a way to configure the Exchange server to remove the codes from outgoing emails?

Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

It depends on how hidden you want it.

You send one email, the same email goes to every recipient. When you think about it, it doesn't make sense otherwise.

• On a technical level, To, CC and BCC are the same, although the BCC is not included in the message. If the message goes to multiple recipients within the same domain, it is sent only once.
• From the users' point of view, if you talk with two people about the email you sent them, and they received different emails, it would be very confusing.

That being said, you can hide information in some otherwise useless parts of HTML that the average user will never see, but that are still present for every recipient. You can even encrypt it so that even a thorough observer will not understand what it means. If you don't need much information, use it to name some HTML ids so that it seems just like a random name generated by the software.