Thanks for your comments. It's not about reality, however, on which level I
agree with you and Len wholeheartedly. It's about the RFCs, which, as you
concur, suggest that the standard headers were designed to be considered
trustworthy, while in particular the nonstandard x-sender: was designed to
be considered untrustworthy.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Thursday, October 26, 2000 10:45 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: RE: [IMail Forum] HEADER QUESTION
>
>
> > 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
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