THE FACT IS THAT IF YOU ARE ON A CRUISE SHIP AT THEIR INTERNET CAFE, OR AT
AN
AIRPORT WAITING LOUNGE INTERNET ACCESS KIOSK, (and many other public-access
situations) YOU MOST LIKELY HAVE *NO* CONTROL ABOUT WHAT SMTP MAIL SERVER IS
GOING TO BE SENDING YOUR OUTGOING E-MAIL MESSAGE. That notwithstanding,
OBVIOUSLY you would STILL want to use "your" own E-mail address as the sender!
Why would you not send the email as:
From: fred(_at_)cruise(_dot_)ship(_dot_)com
Reply-To: fred(_at_)your(_dot_)own(_dot_)domain(_dot_)com
It seems that this is what RFC 2822 (see below) offers as a solution
to the difficulty. The owners of cruise.ship.com can publish their SPF
records, the envelope FROM header correctly identifies the origin of
the mail (cruise.ship.com), no one is confused about where to send the
reply.
The fact is that there is (at present, anyhow) NO capability to send a
specified/different "Reply-To:" header.
If I go on holiday and send a friend a postcard, I don't try to
pretend that the postcard was sent from my hometown. What would be the
point? I'd have shelled out all this money and he wouldn't know to be
jealous.
That's not the issue. The issue is that you want to deal with business mail as
business mail, and you want to maintain continuity of contact details,
especially for E-mail correspondents that you have ongoing contact with.
Why should email be any different? If I'm goint to be using the
address from which I send as the place I want to receive responses,
then I don't use Reply-To: (and replies will come to my new
(temporary) email address). If I want to receive replies back at home
then adding Reply-To: seems straightforward enough.
Again, the FACT is that you're not offered that as an option.
Is it POSSIBLE to re-engineer all the world's E-mail systems? I suppose, in
most cases. But is it WORTH doing? I don't think it is... at least not when
the payback is as dubious as it is in this case.
Gordon Peterson http://personal.terabites.com/
1977-2002 Twenty-fifth anniversary year of Local Area Networking!
Support free and fair US elections! http://stickers.defend-democracy.org
12/19/98: Partisan Republicans scornfully ignore the voters they "represent".
12/09/00: the date the Republican Party took down democracy in America.
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