The reality of world-wide email currently is that whilst the RFC 733/822
form of naming real world entities, originators and recipients is
common, the practice is hardly uniform, nor does it actually conform to
the dogma of DNS-related naming which would be preemptively imposed on
us all by some voices. Quite to the contrary. The growth is in service
provider named/addressed entities, plus gateway routing expressed
as local conditional attribute extensions. All sorts of devices are
being actually used to convey local character ets, quote rules, etc.
attribute separators, etc.
Increasingly, I actually see user's distinguishing their name, their
email name (as they believe it to be) from the RFC 822 string encoded
mnemonic and numeric O/R-address used by their computers and messaging
systems, which are increasingly reflecting the organizational structure
of their institutions, their economic relations with telecomms and
other service companies, and the separation of message handling and
preparation from (source) routing, addressing and transfer. The Lan
revolution is email is beginning to bite: the content of messages
often repeat the To field, using a curtailed DN, the users often annote
their salutation with their perceived email address, and the headers
show how system of all types will cooperate to get the message from A
to B. This all shows users voting with their feet.
I received today a classic of what is happening in the free for all
messaging system relaying networks: it suggests we have to ensure that
the thing we certify has little to do with messaging protocols setups
being used/suffered by the unwashed masses (quote from ietf list.)
I suggest a computer professional would struggle to decode this mess.
Help desks beware. Now add Mime in the middle of all that, and some
long hex strings for PEM/MSP keys and content...
Peter (provocatively, and for fun, remember).
--------
(SN=surname, FN=firstname, subsituted)
Return-Path:
<SN+c_FN+aLocal_Gateway%Electronic_Messaging_Association(_at_)mcimail(_dot_)com>
...
Date: Tue, 12 Jul 94 14:47 EST
From: "SN, FN(_at_)Local Gateway"
<SN+c_FN+aLocal_Gateway%Electronic_Messaging_Association(_at_)mcimail(_dot_)com>
To: Peter Williams <williams(_at_)atlas(_dot_)arc(_dot_)nasa(_dot_)gov>
Subject: Comments on EMU Security Article
Message-Id: <31940712194713/0006378343PK4EM(_at_)mcimail(_dot_)com>
From: SN, FN on Tue, Jul 12, 1994 3:48 PM
Subject: Comments on EMU Security Article
To: Peter Williams
...
Regards
...
foo(_at_)ema(_dot_)org