> And my statement about "x-" is completely correct: it "signifies"
> an untrustworthy header BECAUSE the "x-" headers are unstandardized,
> hence not to be processed by RFC-compliant relays, whereas the
> standard headers, despite your objection, are to be taken as
> relatively trustworthy and used to deliver mail.
Yes and no.
The standard headers, as defined in RFC821/RFC822, must be considered by the SMTP
clients/servers as if they were trustworthy. For example, if the "From:" header says
"[EMAIL PROTECTED]", and the user replies to the E-mail, the mail client has to assume
that "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" is the correct address to send to (assuming only the From:
header is present).
However, all of the headers can be forged, so in reality, few can truly be trusted.
You can only trust the headers placed by your mail server, and any mail servers back
in the chain that you can also trust (IE, if your local branch office has a mail
server that gets mail from headquarters, you can trust the headers placed at
headquarters).
Of course, forged headers are often easy to detect, and can often provide many more
clues than legitimate headers.
-Scott
Please visit http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html
to be removed from this list.
An Archive of this list is available at:
http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/
