On 2004-02-16, Tim Legant penned:
> "Monique Y. Herman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
>> On 2004-02-16, Jason R. Mastaler penned:
>>> "Monique Y. Herman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>>>
>>>> Which header is used to set the To: line in the incoming log?
>>>
>>> The envelope recipient address, usually taken from the $RECIPIENT
>>> environment variable.  See http://tmda.net/filter-sources.html
>>
>> I suppose that somehow recreating that variable so that one can use
>> the 'to' rule to filter by the address the sender actually specified
>> in the first place is a really bad idea, right?  Actually, scratch
>> that; I'm sure it would be.
>
> Not sure I understand your question, but...  The RECIPIENT variable
> *is* the address the sender actually specified.  Regardless of what
> garbage gets put in the To: header field, the envelope recipient
> (RECIPIENT) describes the real destination of the message.

The RECIPIENT variable may be the address the sender actually specified,
but in the case of forwarding, it's not the address the *person* who
sent the mail specified.  Almost all of my mail is actually forwarded
from other servers ... (Yes, it's #131234512 on my to-do list to
straighten all of this out, but in the meantime ...)

>> This continues to be a point of confusion for me.  I guess I'm just
>> dense.  Going through my incoming logs, there are only two
>> variations: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (as specified in my exim
>> configuration) and [EMAIL PROTECTED] (thanks to fetchmail).  If I
>> somehow got fetchmail properly configured, I would only ever have one
>> envelope recipient.  So I guess my question is, how useful is it,
>> really, to filter based on that?
>
> I think it's useful.  See below.  However, if you want to filter
> against the To: field, you can use a 'headers' rule to do so.  There's
> not much value there, though, because valid mail might not have your
> address in the To: field.

Well, it doesn't help in the case of BCCs, but I can't off the top of my
head think of a situation in which, if someone is BCCing me with
messages I want, I wouldn't just whitelist the sender.  I would be
surprised if I ended up on the BCC list of a legitemate email from a
complete stranger.

>> I strongly suspect that I'm missing the big picture here.  In what
>> situations would one have a variety of envelope recipients to deal
>> with?
>
> Well, if you use extension addresses, the RECIPIENT will be different.
> For instance, I use numerous extension addresses, one for each web
> site I deal with.  I whitelist that particular address.  If they abuse
> it, I remove it from my whitelist.  These are addresses like
> 'thl-aol', for my AIM account, 'thl-walgreens', for my Walgreen's
> account, etc.  In other words, a single recipient can have multiple
> addresses and RECIPIENT reflects that.

Ahah!  There's my answer.  Thank you =)

-- 
monique

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