Dick St.Peters wrote on Friday, January 26, 2007 11:47 AM -0600:
What this doesn't take into account is *why* addresses are forwarded.
For example, a common forwarding use is "role" addresses, such as
"treasurer(_at_)organization(_dot_)org" where a new treasurer is elected
periodically, or "service(_at_)company(_dot_)com" where multiple people
receive
the mail.
<...>
People often have their mail forwarded to a friend's or relative's
email account when away on holiday visiting the friend or relative.
Both of these are good reasons to use alias forwarding. I think the
reason the most of us would agree these two are good uses is that the
forwarding arrangement is time-limited. Unfortunately, alias forwarding
is equally easy to set up for very long-term or even permanent address
changes. Forwarding in these circumstances is bad for the email system
as a whole, but it will be very hard to convince individual providers to
stop offering a service _their_ customers utilize. No one wants to be
the first to do this and lose customers for no immediate benefit. This
is why predicting the imminent demise of forwarding, because we don't
like it technically and because email as a whole would be better off
without it, is unrealistic at best.
--
Seth Goodman
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