[BNM] Email question

David Pashley david at davidpashley.com
Thu May 1 15:01:07 BST 2008


On May 01, 2008 at 14:38, Alastair James praised the llamas by saying:
> 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).

That's a reasonable way of doing it. I would also recommend that your
mailserver accepts noreply at iwanttogohere.com so servers doing sender
callout verification don't complain, but obviously you don't need to
read it.
> 
> 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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> 
> 
> 

-- 
David Pashley
david at davidpashley.com
Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione.


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