Hi, Stephen,

I understand your point that some UX displays are better than others. However, 
I'm not going to get into a debate about the merits and drawbacks, and under 
what scenarios, about how Outlook vs. how other mail clients choose to display 
Sender:, From:, Reply-To:, and other fields. It's not within my area of 
ownership nor have I looked any usability studies surrounding showing it as X 
vs. Y. Rather, we have Internet RFCs that define how to handle email but no 
RFCs about how to display email.

There is a lot of overlap in some mail clients, but there is also ambiguity 
about how to show certain things. To say "My users like this, and don't like 
that" is good anecdotal evidence but what proportion of mail flow is that? How 
representative is it for everyone else? How much does the existing user base 
understand or even care about how something like this is displayed? Is it good 
enough? These are not questions that are easily answered.

Thanks.

-- Terry

-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen J. Turnbull [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2015 7:20 PM
To: Terry Zink
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [dmarc-ietf] Sending email on behalf of?

Terry Zink writes:

 > Seeing as how there isn't any consensus on how MTAs should display
 > things, Outlook's implementation of displaying multiple
 > sender/from/reply-to  fields is on-par with almost anyone else's.

That criterion ("no consensus") is like saying that since there's no
consensus on what constitutes great art, my daughter's finger painting
is on-par with Picasso's Guernica.

We have testimony here (and I can confirm that from observation of
Mailman lists, as well as report my personal "Ugh!" reaction) that
Outlook's "on behalf of" treatment of the Sender field causes
confusion and annoyance for third party services.

The ball is in your court, tell us about the benefits, don't tell us
that pros and cons don't matter.  I'm perfectly willing to believe
that it has benefits in environments I have not experienced, I just
can't think of any.  Especially not in the modern environment where
malicious agents will spoof any field that might be displayed to
support their frauds.  This is the attitude of most in the Mailman
community.  It won't ameliorate our pain, but at least it will help me
to reduce the open hostility my community shows to Outlook over this
issue, if you can come up with plausible arguments "pro" this display.

BTW, I consider this subthread mildly on-topic, as trying to
understand the protocols we propose requires understanding the threat
models, and it is fundamental to DMARC that header display is part of
any threat model (to the point where DMARC interdicts whole message
for the sole purpose of ensuring that "From" is not displayed to the
recipient).

Regards,
Steve
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