Can other people see my Outlook Contact Groups?

Question

I am using MS Outlook, and we use MS Exchange for handling email. If I create a Contact Groups in Outlook of a bunch of people I regularly email together, and I use this to address an email, will all the recipients (also using Outlook on top of Exchange) see that group name in the "To" field when they receive the email? Or will they just see a list of their addresses?

We have some all-company Contact Groups, kind of like "All employees," "All Chicago employees," etc, and I see these in the "To" field when they are used. But does this apply to Contact Groups that I make for my own use as well?

Solution 1

This also depends on the server configuration: is it MS Exchange? If it's in an Exchange server, the company or users WITHIN the Exchange server will see the group name, and be able to expand it. If it is going to another domain not managed by that same Exchange server, it will show the effects as what Dennis has posted above.

Solution 2

Test

1. I've created a Contact Group (Me and Myself) containing two addresses of mine:

   • Me, [email protected]

   • Myself, [email protected]

2. I've sent test mails with the following configurations:

   • To: Me and Myself

   • CC: Me and Myself

   • BCC: Me and Myself

3. The received emails had the following headers:

   • To: "'Me'" <[email protected]>, "'Myself'" <[email protected]> (both emails)

   • Cc: "'Me'" <[email protected]>, "'Myself'" <[email protected]> (both emails)

   • To: "My Name" <[email protected]> (first email)

     To: "My Name" <[email protected]> (second email)

Results

• When used with the To or the CC field, the emails will contain a list of all recipients (as usual).

  The displayed names will be the ones assigned in the contact list.

• When used with the BCC field, each recipient will only see his only email address (as usual).

  The displayed name is not the one chosen from the contact list, but it gets fetched from the address book.

Conclusion

As always, use BCC to protect privacy.

Comments

[harrymc]

Question: Why don't you use the Bcc: field ?

[Steven Noto]

Thanks for pointing that out; I edited my question. I am interested in how co-workers also using Outlook on top of Exchange will see the email addresses.