----- Original Message ----- > From: "Bill Cole" <mailmanu-20100...@billmail.scconsult.com>
> It is altogether always wrong for ANY mail software outside of a domain > to parse the local part of an address in that domain except for a tiny > handful of standard special local parts (e.g. "postmaster"). The use of > '+' as a tag delimiter is widespread but it is not in any sense a > "standard" and comes nowhere near universality. There is no way for a > Mailman instance to know which domains make "user+tag" and "user" > equivalent and which do not, so canonicalizing as you suggest would > result in breakage. Noted. FWIW, in 30 years, I have not seen *any* use of the + sign in LHSs which did not appear on its face to be a plushack... though as you imply, I can't really tell for sure. > Beyond that risk of breakage, "canonicalizing" local parts which one > does not own is wrong in principle: it violates the core assumption > which makes Sendmail-style plus-tagging useful. The tagged address is > supposed to be unique in the view of everyone except its owner and the > owner's delivery agent, which can easily discern that an address is > tagged (maybe with '+' but maybe not) and then handle the address and > tag in whatever locally customized manner their whims dictate. Outside > entities should never try to guess what those whims are at any > particular time and more importantly should never translate an address > from what it actually is to what their guesses about the owner's whims > implies. Ok, I guess I'll buy that. I appreciate you showing the work for me, Bill; I hadn't thought it all the way through. > Note: you might look at my address for this list and make any of a > number of reasonable guesses about how its structure (which *IS* > significant) relates to its delivery and handling. Most would be > operationally wrong and none would be complete. I tag addresses in > opaque ways precisely because of past rude & clueless attempts by > others (mostly spammers) to break + tagging. Heh. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink j...@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA #natog +1 727 647 1274 ------------------------------------------------------ Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
