[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Well, if you are doing the responses from within the mail server, it is preferable to do neither... ideally vacation messages should go to the address specified in the "MAIL FROM" commend during the SMTP session. If you are just doing it on the client, it is less correct but safer to use the From header. Here's why...Hi everyone,I'm running an application that sends out email notifications to customers. It is supposed to be a one-way communication channel but there are lways inevitable bounces and replies from users. We also get our fair share of out-of-office messages. Our emails are constructed in such a way that the Reply-To: and From: headers contain distinct email-addresses in our domain. This enables us to determine which email we have sent has caused the reply or bounce. I've seen a number of out-of-office messages that have been sent to the address that was set in the From: header. Is this the way an automated reply is supposed to be handled? Reading RFC2822 does not really clarify this: "When the "Reply-To:" field is present, it indicates the mailbox(es) to which the author of the message suggests that replies be sent. In the absence of the "Reply-To:" field, replies SHOULD by default be sent to the mailbox(es) specified in the "From:" field unless otherwise specified by the person composing the reply." I would interpret this as: "use the Reply-To: to reply to if present, otherwise use the From:". Is my interpretation incorrect?
The message you sent to this list, the From is your address, the Reply-To is the mailing list, and the MAIL-FROM address was a special one-time address that the mailing list used to track bounces for this message.
If you use the Reply-To address, then you're going to send a message back to the mailing list, which will generate another vacation notice, etc... So Reply-To would make more sense but isn't very good for vacation notices. (some listservs do not set the reply-to to be the mailing list, so then you have the same behavior as From below...)
If you use the From address, you as the author would get the vacation notice. You'll sometimes see this when you post to listservs. This isn't great (because the author doesn't care), but at least doesn't risk creating an infinite loop.
If you use the one-time address from MAIL FROM, then the mailing list software will see that it was unable to deliver this message. This will likely just be seen as a temporary state, and it can determine whether to stop sending you messages for a while (probably send you a notice in the meantime letting you know what's going on).
Anyway, if you want to be tracking bounces, you really should look into VERP. James doesn't have an out-of-the-box ability to do this for you, but you can write a mailet to track VERP bounces. (http://cr.yp.to/proto/verp.txt)
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Serge Knystautas
Loki Technologies
http://www.lokitech.com
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