On Wed, Feb 04, 2026 at 04:12:26PM -0800, Robert L Mathews via mailop wrote:

> Some investigation showed that those messages already had a
> "Delivered-To: <destination address on our servers>" header before
> they ever reached our servers. This breaks Postfix mail loop
> detection, which uses that header to tell if a message has already
> been delivered [1].
> [...]
> [1] <https://www.postfix.org/local.8.html>: "If mail arrives for a
> recipient that is already listed in a Delivered-To: header, the
> message is bounced."

For the record, Postfix delivery agents other than local(8) don't
necessarily enforce delivery loop detection.  In particular:

    - The virtual(8) delivery agent prepends a "Delivered-To"
      header, but does not perform loop detection (because it
      is never involved in mail forwarding).

    - The pipe(8), smtp(8) and lmtp(8) delivery agents only
      do loop detection when the "D" flag is part of their
      master(5).cf command-line.

    - Unsurprisingly, the discard(8) and error(8) delivery agents
      don't do anything with the "Delivered-To" header.

The above is no way a blame-shifting exercise.  Systems that are
not performing final delivery SHOULD NOT be prepending "Delivered-To:"
headers.  Rather, the intent is to post information that may be helpful
to someone who wants to receive such messages on a Postfix system, via
the virtual(8) delivery agent or perhaps LMTP (without a "D" flag).

-- 
    Viktor.  🇺🇦 Слава Україні!
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