Is it possible to differentiate between bounces and replies for a mail using matchers or mailets? I noticed that bounces are sent to the from address instead of the reply-to address, but not really knowing this is just a coincidence or according the specs.
I read that inside a mail, there is yet another address, the envelope address, and that address is used to send the bounce to... Now, what if I just specify another from and reply-to address for mails send with James? Do the bounces go to the from or reply-to, or will they go to the envelope addres I can't see? What happens with read-notification mails, because I also need to be able to trigger those using a mailet...
This is fairly important for me since I am integrating with James to provide robust reporting for an electronic mailing system. And my customer rather wants to see his email address in the from and reply, instead of some fishy address referring to the mail server of the mailing system.
I can give a definitive "probably". Here's what we've got:
- an email server will use the SMTP MAIL FROM email address. servers do all the delivery, so a bounce will be sent to that address. People who want to track bounces use an approach called VERP where every email gets a unique sending address.
- an email client will use the From (or reply-to or other) header to reply. so a reply will use that address.
The kicker is vacation messages, and to a less extent, mailing lists.
Vacation messages are not undefined... they are sometimes handled by the client, sometimes by the server, so that's the first problem. Second, nobody defines how to send a vacation bounce as temporary as opposed to a permanent bounce. Basically, vacation messages are very rare as a result of this lack of specificity.
Mailing lists do not always follow the rules. Poor implementations (like the first one in James I wrote) reply to the wrong place. Man, my frisbee team was pissed when everyone received hundreds of bounces in an hour because one address was bouncing and created a bad loop. Anyway, mailing lists are not 100% reliable.
Oh, you ask about read confirmations. Honestly I don't know much about it, but believe they would follow the email client behavior.
So you can overlay that with your need for robustness. Generally, sounds like you want VERP and just make sure you set the From (and Reply-To if you want) correctly.
-- Serge Knystautas President Lokitech >> software . strategy . design >> http://www.lokitech.com p. 301.656.5501 e. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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