ietf-mta-filters
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Re: vacation 5.4 From:

2007-03-07 08:15:40


Hello,
draft-ietf-sieve-vacation-07 sais:

This draft was approved as proposed standard many months back. It is now
much too late to consider such a change. Maybe in the next version.

* 5.4. From
*
*   Unless explicitly overridden with a :from parameter, the From field
*   SHOULD be set to the address of the owner of the Sieve script.

I would suggest here another approach: the From is by default the
(first) address, where the mail was sent. E.g. mails to
root(_at_)aegee(_dot_)org, mail(_at_)aegee(_dot_)org, and 
dilyan(_dot_)palauzov(_at_)aegee(_dot_)org go all
to the same mailbox, have the same sieve script (not on a duplica of
the script, but opearate on the same script). However when one writes
a mail To: you, her, CC: mail(_at_)aegee(_dot_)org, then the autoreply shall be
Fron: mail(_at_)aegee(_dot_)org (instead From: 
Your-unknown-uncle(_at_)aegee(_dot_)org). In
a similar way, when one writes To: him, them, CC: root(_at_)aegee(_dot_)org, the
autoreply shall come From: root(_at_)aegee(_dot_)org, even if the same script is
executed.

I suggest we use in 5.4 From something like

*   Unless explicitly overridden with a :from parameter, the From field
*   SHOULD be set to the address of recipient's first mentioned address,
*   whose Sieve script is executes.

Moreover, it shall be stated, that the script is executed once per
incoming mail and mailbox (if it is not clear from somewhereelse): if
a mail is To: mail(_at_)aegee(_dot_)org, root(_at_)aegee(_dot_)org , then there 
shall be one
autoreply generatated, not two (as this is the same mailbox). But I
have no idea how the user will be informed about both addresses.

First of all, while it would be good to have some advice in there saying it
probably makes sense to use an address the recipient knows is yours, I don't
think this rises to anything close to a SHOULD. Site policy may mandate using
specific addresses in all replies, for example.

The concept of "first-mentioned" also seems a bit ill-defined (e.g,  does
resent-to come before or after to?) and actually somewhat wrongmineded. The
obvious address to use in replies is the envelope recipient address - as long
as it's the one that satisfied the header match criteria, and regardless of
what header field it matched or where it appeared in that field. If that's not
the address that matched something in the header things get a bit tricky.
Suppose the match was to one of the :addresses values. What then? This may be
the best address for the originator, but in forwarding situations there may be
authorization issues (think DKIM or SPF) with one site emitting mail with an
address belonging to some other forwarding site.

If memory serves, our implementation uses the envelope recipient address unless
overridden by a :from - we don't attempt anything tricky with using :addresses
values.

In any case, I don't have a problem with saying something along the lines of:

  Unless explicitly overridden with a :from parameter, the From field
  should be set to an address the person sending the original message
  is likely to recognize. One possibility is to use the orivinal message's
  envelope recipient address if it is available. If it is not available
  the recipient's address that satisfied the header matching criteria
  could be used, although caution should be exercised in using addresses
  specified in a :addresses construct that belong to other sites.

But as i say, too late for this version.

                                Ned

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