From: Omar Thameen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
I just know it's true, but where does it say that auto-responders (e.g.,
vacation programs) must reply to the envelope from and certainly NOT to
the address in the reply-to field?
You can not find the language because it does not exist. There is no
official standard for the behavior of vacation programs.
There are two widely held positions (and there are others, which is why
there is no official standard yet).
One is the Berkeley vacation program, which would only respond to the
message From: header if the recipient was actually listed in the message
To: or Cc: header. This fails for lists that put the actual recipient
in the message headers and then set the message Reply-To: header to the
list, unless the user remembers to pre-list the mailing lists.
The other is to follow the path of the Delivery Status Notification
(DSN) and Message Delivery Notification (MDN) standards, which both
specify the use of the envelope from for their purposes.
If you check the archives you'll find there was a discussion of this not
too long ago, i.e., this year.
Jim
