Strange Correspondent fields shown when sending with bcc in

[ymoto7]

A strange problem when using TB to send an email with empty "To" field and only the "bcc" field completed. In both Sent and Inbox folders, in the Correspondents field, I see a strange string of characters "=?UTF=8?B? ... ... ". This happens only when I have set-up TB in Greek language. When I turn it into English, the expected "undisclosed-recipients" is shown.

Have a look at the following image to see how the message is shown when sent with TB greek (first line) and then with TB in English. I have tested it in both windows (TB 91 32bit, TB 91 64bit, TB 102 64 bit) and Linux Mint (TB 91 64 bit).



Any help is appreciated. Thank you!

[tanstaafl]

That header is probably encoded using a different character set than the message and the Greek version of Thunderbird displays it "as is" rather than interpreting it. It looks like its using UTF-8 (which I would normally expect it to interpret) but I don't know what locale the Greek version of Thunderbird uses.

I suggest you send a one line plain text message to your self. Then select your sent folder, your copy of the sent message and use Control-U to view the raw message source. Find the Content-Type: header nearest the Subject header (the Content-Type header nearest the top of the message source). What is it set to? Mine is set to Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed since I'm using the en-USA locale.

https://dmorgan.info/posts/encoded-word-syntax/

[ymoto7]

Thank you very much for your answer. Here is the source extract from the above two messages. The first one corresponds to the Greek version, the second one to the English one:

Code: Select all

To: =?UTF-8?B?zqzOs869z4nPg8+Ezr/OuSDPgM6xz4HOsc67zq7PgM+EzrXPgg==?=: ;
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Code: Select all

To: undisclosed-recipients: ;
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

I also just tried with a new email, to myself, as you suggested. The content type is the same as above. Both in Greek and English versions it is "text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed".

[tanstaafl]

I used https://www.base64decode.org to translate zqzOs869z4nPg8+Ezr/OuSDPgM6xz4HOsc67zq7PgM+EzrXPgg==? and got άγνωστοι παραλήπτες which google translate says is unknown recipients . Not sure how it lost the hyphen.

Both the Greek and English versions of Thunderbird are defaulting to using UTF-8 (Unicode). I don't understand why the Greek version of Thunderbird would specify a separate character set encoding in the Subject when it matches the default encoding but I vaguely remember seeing that in a old thread.

I rarely have to deal with character set encoding issues since everybody I correspond with uses English. Let me do some research and also see if I can find any related bug reports. It may take a day or two. I'll also try to duplicate your problem using a German version (I used to know a little bit of German).

https://www.telemessage.com/developer/f ... ject-line/

[ymoto7]

I used https://www.base64decode.org to translate zqzOs869z4nPg8+Ezr/OuSDPgM6xz4HOsc67zq7PgM+EzrXPgg==? and got άγνωστοι παραλήπτες which google translate says is unknown recipients .

This is exactly the text in Greek that corresponds to undisclosed recipients.

Not sure how it lost the hyphen.

What hyphen?

Both the Greek and English versions of Thunderbird are defaulting to using UTF-8 (Unicode). I don't understand why the Greek version of Thunderbird would specify a separate character set encoding in the Subject when it matches the default encoding but I vaguely remember seeing that in a old thread.

I rarely have to deal with character set encoding issues since everybody I correspond with uses English. Let me do some research and also see if I can find any related bug reports. It may take a day or two. I'll also try to duplicate your problem using a German version (I used to know a little bit of German).

https://www.telemessage.com/developer/f ... ject-line/

Thank you soooooooooooooooooo much!!! Really appreciated!

[tanstaafl]

I haven't been able to duplicate this problem yet. I initially focused on using different character set encoding in the Subject than the message thinking it was a more general problem. They were displayed correctly.

I then tried using αβγδΔνπ as the mailing list name. That made no difference, it kept using

To: undisclosed-recipients: ; as the header.

Using a german version of Thunderbird to send the same message just changed undisclosed recipients to hidden receiver (in german). I couldn't get it to explicitly encode the headers that get displayed in the Correspondents column using a different character set.

I then edited a message in the mbox file for the Local Folders inbox to use
To: =?UTF-8?B?zqzOs869z4nPg8+Ezr/OuSDPgM6xz4HOsc67zq7PgM+EzrXPgg==?=: ;

That didn't effect the correspondents column (had my name and my fathers name) even after using "repair folder" to rebuild the folder listing. That did display the To: header "as is" (no character set interpretation) in the message. Its not clear where it got the display name for me in the Correspondents column as its not anywhere in the message. But that seems a different problem as it displayed the expected string in both the Correspondents and Recipients column (in English).

I wonder if your problem is specific to your email provider's smtp server. What email provider are you using? Can you duplicate the problem using a free email provider such as gmail, yahoo or outlook?

[ymoto7]

I will try and I let you know. It should not be a SMTP server error, because in previous versions of Thunderbird, I did not get this behaviour! The mail server is the one of the Greek Schools network (mail.sch.gr), that I use for years know, and just recently I got this problem. I'll be back with the test results...

[ymoto7]

I just tried with gmx.com and I get the same as well. Thus, is this a bug in the Greek version only?

I tried in the French language now. I get "destinataires inconnus" (uknown recipients) as expected, in both Inbox and Sent Correspondents.

[tanstaafl]

I added a GMX IMAP account and sent a message using a mailing list via BCC. The correspondents column is fine in each account (sender and recipients).

Perhaps this is a bug in the localization of the Greek version of Thunderbird. If so, its a weird one.