A suggestion for preventing machine mail loops

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2 total messages Started by JCURRAN%UMASS.BITNET Wed, 11 Dec 1985 07:54

#52

Author: JCURRAN%UMASS.BITNET
Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1985 07:54

17 lines
1152 bytes

    It occurs to me that the rfc822 document has very good
provisions for handling machine generated mail and preventing
'loops' per se.  In a server or demon, one can simply provide
the following set of fields in a out-going message:

From:  Server-name@node
Sender: Person@node
Reply-to: <>

    In this way, the actual origin is specified, but will never
be used as an address; all errors should be sent to the person
responsible for the server, and any attempts at replies to the
server should be disallowed since the reply-to field is null.

-- John Curran
-- Umass/Amherst

Re: A suggestion for preventing machine mail loops

#57

Author: Joel West
Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1985 15:44

26 lines
1588 bytes

In article <537@brl-tgr.ARPA>, JCURRAN%UMASS.BITNET@WISCVM.ARPA writes:
>     It occurs to me that the rfc822 document has very good
> provisions for handling machine generated mail and preventing
> 'loops' per se.  In a server or demon, one can simply provide
> the following set of fields in a out-going message:
>
> From:  Server-name@node
> Sender: Person@node
> Reply-to: <>

I would be inclined to use
        Reply-To: Postmaster
or perhaps, even better,
        Reply-To: Postal-Complaints
:-)

However, some mail systems don't look at Reply-To.  And, in the UUCP
world (remember us, guys), this will usually not contain an explicit
path, so that if the message is going very far, it will never
make it back.

--
        Joel West               (619) 457-9681
        CACI, Inc. Federal, 3344 N. Torrey Pines Ct., La Jolla, CA  92037
        {cbosgd,ihnp4,pyramid,sdcsvax,ucla-cs}!gould9!joel
        gould9!joel@nosc.ARPA

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