[Mailman-Users] From Address and non-member posts
Brad Knowles
brad.knowles at skynet.be
Wed Jun 30 19:08:44 CEST 2004
At 5:16 PM +0100 2004-06-30, Ian A B Eiloart wrote:
>>> > 1. When I post to my mailming list the From address comes like
>>> > "mylist-bounces at mydomain.com". Why can't I have the from address as
>>> > the address of the sender?
>>>
>>> Because that's where bounces go, and you want automatic unsubscription
>>> to work, don't you?
>>
>> And, as a subscriber, I don't want all the bounce messages coming to me!
>> As Ralf says, let mailman see the bounces and deal with them.
>
> No, that's wrong. The question was about the "From:" address. Bounces
> go to the "Sender:" address. The from address has to be the person who
> composed the message. The sender address is the agent that sent it to
> the recipient.
There is the header "From:" field, and then there is the envelope
sender address. The latter is sometimes indicated as something like:
From <iane at sussex.ac.uk>
In particular, note the lack of a colon after the word "From".
This is sometimes indicated as the "From_" address, where the
underscore character is understood to stand for a space character in
this usage.
It is not exactly clear to me which one is being referred to
here. The original quote does not indicate a colon after the word
"From:", but I'm not 100% certain as to whether or not the author was
aware of this connotation.
Note that some MTAs will promote the envelope sender address into
the header "From:" field (especially if no header "From:" field
exists), and some MUAs display an address listed in the "Sender:"
field in addition or in place of the "From:" field (if they are
different).
Bounces are sent to the envelope sender address, which may or may
not be recorded in the "Sender:" field, or elsewhere in the message.
It's important to distinguish between the envelope sender address and
the contents of the "From:" and "Sender:" fields, because the
envelope sender address may be lost or irretrievably altered once the
message is received.
You should never attempt to bounce a message to any address in
any header field -- you should always bounce back to the actual
envelope sender address. This obviously causes problems if the
envelope sender address is lost or irretrievably altered.
--
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles at skynet.be>
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania.
SAGE member since 1995. See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.
More information about the Mailman-Users
mailing list