-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Am 14.04.2008 16:30 schrieb Michael Brown: > The | character is not allowed in any e-mail address because it's a Unix > shell reserved character.
RFC 2822 disagrees with you. To begin with, there's no reason reserved characters of any Unix shell or other program should be disallowed in E-mail addresses. > Here's a list right off the top of my head that are usually > blocked/disabled by just about every MTA out there. > > 1. Control Characters > 23. DEL Ok. These are indeed illegal by the RFCs. > 2. Space Not true. Valid E-mail addresses containing spaces do exist, although their owners may have a hard time getting mails from some parts of the 'net. > 3. ! > 16. < > 17. > > 18. @ (when used more than once) > 19. [ > 20. \ > 21. ] Ok in a way. These are special characters for the mail transport itself (as opposed to some application program or shell) - though only historically in the case of the exclamation mark - and are therefore better avoided. Mail addresses containing one of these in the local part (ie. before the last @) will indeed rarely go through. > 4. " Not true. In fact, any mail server I know of accepts mail addresses whose local part is enclosed in double quotes just fine. > 5. # > 6. $ > 7. % > 8. & > 12. , > 13. / > 14. : > 15. ; Not true. I have already seen every one of these characters in valid E-mail addresses in the wild, and blocking them does generate complaints. (btdt) > 9. ( > 10. ) > 11. * > 22. | Not true either. While these are indeed rare, and may cause problems with buggy and/or misconfigured mail software, they are legal by RFC 2822, and blocking them is a policy decision which is far from unanimity. There are many mailservers which will indeed accept these. So why am I dissecting that list like this? Just to show that blocking or not blocking certain unusal characters in mail addresses is indeed a policy decision which should not be forced by a piece of software, but at most offered as a configurable option. HTH T. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.3rc1 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFIBTZlQ3+did9BuFsRAghXAKCYhBT45TH06hR8DWrB46WnzjDLpACglrgK MF3dKKZBUSnc+AmkDSg78z0= =BX/w -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Help us build a comprehensive ClamAV guide: visit http://wiki.clamav.net http://lurker.clamav.net/list/clamav-users.html
