>Fair warning, as I must when things like this come up. This rather
>blatantly violates RFC-822, the document which defines the Internet mail
>standard. Reply-To is supposed to be set by the originator of a message
>(ie, the person who submits it to the list), not the agent responsible
>for handing the message off to the final MTA for delivery to the list's
>subscribers.
RFC 822 requires Return-Path to be set to the originator. Reply-To can
be set to anything. Here's the relevant portion of the RFC:
4.4.3. REPLY-TO / RESENT-REPLY-TO
This field provides a general mechanism for indicating any
mailbox(es) to which responses are to be sent. Three typical
uses for this feature can be distinguished. In the first
case, the author(s) may not have regular machine-based mail-
boxes and therefore wish(es) to indicate an alternate machine
address. In the second case, an author may wish additional
persons to be made aware of, or responsible for, replies. A
somewhat different use may be of some help to "text message
teleconferencing" groups equipped with automatic distribution
services: include the address of that service in the "Reply-
To" field of all messages submitted to the teleconference;
then participants can "reply" to conference submissions to
guarantee the correct distribution of any submission of their
own.
Note: The "Return-Path" field is added by the mail transport
service, at the time of final deliver. It is intended
to identify a path back to the orginator of the mes-
sage. The "Reply-To" field is added by the message
originator and is intended to direct replies.
Setting Reply-To to the list name is an example of the third case above.
---
Stephen Graham
graham@ee.washington.edu
graham@cs.washington.edu
Follow-Ups:
-
Re: Reply-To
From: Richard Pieri <ratinox@unilab.dfci.harvard.edu>
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