On 16/03/2012 12:07, Stephen Booth wrote:
But in the situation we're dealing with here the from address is XXXXX@wdtk and the replay to is XXXXX@wdtk but they are choosing to reply to YYYYY@wdtk. There's also the question of how do they know that XXXXX and YYYYY both reach the same person? Are they just making an assumption.
They may well be making an assumption. But the point is, if they happen to be making the right assumption then they aren't doing anything wrong.
In the fred.bloggs and joe.smith example they would be very fooling to assume that, even if the same person had used both addresses they still had access to the one they did not use to send the request. Since it's often easier to start a new account than to retrieve a forgotten password a lot of people will do just that when they forget their password. Also many people will abandon a hotmail or Yahoo! account when the spam level gets too high and never access it again. To claim that a response has reached someone they would first have to demonstrate a reasonable expectation that the person still used and had access to that channel of communication.
Yes, but in the situation which prompted this thread we know for certain that the messages are being read by the intended recipient.
If an authority uses a different address to the one which is requested, then yes, they're taking a risk that the message might not get through. But if it does get through then you can't claim it didn't.
Is it unhelpful if an authority uses the wrong reply address even though that address does actually reach the applicant? Yes.
Is it foolish? Yes. Is it irritating? Yes. Does it mean that the request hasn't been replied to? No. Mark -- Sent from my Babbage Difference Engine 2 http://mark.goodge.co.uk _______________________________________________ developers-public mailing list [email protected] https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public Unsubscribe: https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/options/developers-public/archive%40mail-archive.com
