🚀 go-pugleaf

Neil Rickert <rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu> writes:
|
|   In article <1992Jul27.024211.20761@ryptyde.cts.com> scott@ryptyde.cts.com (Scott McClure) writes:
|   >
|   >Which is the correct field for a mailer to use when getting the address
|   >from a message to reply to it:
|   >
|   >Return-Path:   *or*   From:
|   >
|   >Seems to me that the Return-Path is often unreliable and should be
|   >avoided, but there still seem to be sites on the net that use this.
|
|     You are supposed to use "Reply-To:" if there is one, otherwise "From:".
|   Don't ever use "Return-Path:".  It is highly unreliable.

Perhaps a little explanation of why it's unreliable would do.  The cause
is, as almost always when we discuss malfunctioning mail software, a
virus known as "sendmail" which has infected a number of systems using
BSD Unix, and has yet to be given the proper attention, i.e. be removed.

The Return-Path header is supposed to be inserted upon final delivery of
the message, as far as SMTP is concerned.  This may not always be final
delivery to the user, though, but on the Internet, it is.  Now, this
bogus SMTP daemon and mail rapist, sendmail, inserts Return-Path headers
at will and does not obey the standard.  And, which is more, it believes
that when a message has a Return-Path header, it should not replace it
with a good one.

The Return-Path is thus meant to be reflect the envelope sender, as SMTP
sees it, and it should, theoretically, be as reliable as bouncing mail
at the SMTP level to bounce it at the application level.  Not so in
practice.  Thanks to sendmail.

Help stomp out sendmail in our lifetime.

Best regards,
</Erik>

--
Erik Naggum             |  ISO  8879 SGML     |
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