[BNM] Email question

[Alastair James]

Thanks guys.

It just re-enforced in my mind that email is bloody complex.

I think I have decided to send from a 'noreply at iwanttogohere.com'
email address and use a reply-to header to give the sender's address.
In my mind thats the most correct (and safe way).

Thanks for the help.

Al

2008/4/29 David Pashley <david at davidpashley.com>:
> On Apr 29, 2008 at 10:24, Alastair James praised the llamas by saying:
>
> > Hi there...
>  >
>  > I am building a 'forward this to a friend' feature. I.e. you click
>  > 'send to a friend' and it asks for your and their email address and a
>  > message. We then send the people a message containing a link to the
>  > content you wanted to send and your message.
>  >
>  > I could set the from field of the email as the person who sent the
>  > message, however we are sending it from our own server. I.e. if you
>  > are bob.jones at gmail.com we would be sending a email from
>  > bob.jones at gmail.com from our own domain. This would be great as people
>  > could hit reply and away they go. However, i guess this is a spam
>  > filter issue? I.e. a message from a sender from another domain than
>  > where the email came from?
>  >
>  > The other option is to have all mails from "noreply at domain.com" and
>  > have a message saying "please do not reply to this message".
>  >
>  > Whats the best option?
>  >
>  There is nothing to stop you using the user's email address as the
>  sending address in the From header. I would recommend using an address
>  from your domain in the SMTP sender option, so that you get bounces.
>
>  Mail servers that do caller sendout verification (pretending to send a
>  mail to the sender to check for address validation) do this using the
>  SMTP sender, not the email From address. As for checking that the email
>  came from a valid server for the domain, again this normally applies to
>  the SMTP sender, not the From header. The usual method is a system
>  called SPF, which isn't very well deployed and assuming the clue of the
>  admin of the reciever's mail server won't be used as the only check to
>  verify an email's spaminess or not.
>
>  In summary, you shouldn't see a huge problem using the user's email
>  address in the From subject. The choice about using their address in the
>  SMTP envelope is up to you.
>
>  --
>  David Pashley
>  david at davidpashley.com
>  Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione.
>
>
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-- 
Dr Alastair James
CTO James Publishing Ltd.

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