reply no longer uses from address - Page 2

spruce · 26 Aug 2005, 01:19 PM

I am confused. When I hit reply, the resulting TO address is always from the FROM address of the mail I'm replying to.

I can see how using X-Delivered-To would be bad. So why, when I hit reply, do I sometimes get the resulting FROM address filled in automatically from the TO address of the mail I'm replying to, and sometimes It's fillled in from the default Personality? (using the web interface) Does it have to do with folders overriding Personalities in some cases?

JRobert · 28 Aug 2005, 11:26 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by spruce
. So why, when I hit reply, do I sometimes get the resulting FROM address filled in automatically from the TO address of the mail I'm replying to, and sometimes It's fillled in from the default Personality? (using the web interface)

If the message was sent to you using one of your personalities or aliases, your reply use that personality or alias as the From: address. Otherwise your default personality is used (such as when you reply to a message that was sent to you as <random>ATyou.fastmail.fm).

-jeff-

spruce · 30 Aug 2005, 12:16 PM

Not so:

I have 2 personalities and no aliases, however, if, for example and hypothetically speaking, I sign up for a Discover card, give them a random address, say [edited email]Discover at you dot fastmail.fm[/edited email] and make a Discover folder, when email is gathered into that folder and I hit reply, [edited email]Discover at you dot fastmail.fm[/edited email] is filled in in the next Compose screen as the From address of my Reply, despite having no alias or default personality telling it to do so. Why does it do this?

Whatever the reason is, I would like to explore duplicating this excellent behavior for email redirected to fastmail from another one of my email boxes. I can see how this could be problematic in the case of redirect from elsewhere as it is not in fastmail's control, and is in fact general SMTP protocol for privacy reasons not to include any trace of the address an email is sent to in the headers of BCC'd email.

<rant>
I believe the reasons are historically due to AOLusers forwarding email to newsgroups with a false expectation of privacy, and then the redirect function being an extension of forwarding. A problem with SMTP is that anything you suggest for verifying spoofed email addresses would be used by spammers for harvesting valid email addresses much faster than it would be used by the general user to stop spammers. Even an immediate bounce by an SMTP server for no user here might be used subtractively by a rougue SMTP server for subtractively gathering valid emails at a given domain. If fastmail has a solution for this type of information gathering dictionary attack, they should at least reassure potential virtual domain (via MX record pointing to fastmail) customers that they have solved this, if not necessarily describing to the world exactly how.
</rant>

<unrelated topic>
Our apologies to anyone at fastmail actually using the name"you." Any suggestions as to how to inform the general forum user some standard names to use in examples when referring to random addresses or plus addresses?
</unrelated topic>

<rant>
<unrelated topic>
Anyone in the know about XML what the actual most popular XML tags would be for "rant" and "unrelated topic" or did I guess right? If I were serious I should have started my post with an XML reference to the standard I was usiing, right? A problem with XML is that, theoretically even if fastmail agreed to host this XML reference, it would have to promise *Never* to delete or put anything else at that URL, or indeed *Never* to change the contents of the XML reference URL as it would forever represent a certain XML protocol version. As I learned when delphi.com sold its domain name out from under many decade old, loyal, paying email customers, a company should technically and legally never promise this.
</unrelated topic>
</rant>

< bannable activity>
OOh, I graduated from Junior Memeber to Member! Only took me four years! Sorry all you Moderators for any trolling I've done, but some users only have time to focus on one issue. Have I ranked anyone's ignore list? Or is it the more likely answer that you are all genuinely busy?
</bannable activity>

**Sherry** · 30 Aug 2005, 12:46 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by spruce
I have 2 personalities and no aliases, however, if, for example and hypothetically speaking, I sign up for a Discover card, give them a random address, say Discover@jcitezen.fastmail.fm and make a Discover folder, when email is gathered into that folder and I hit reply, Discover@jcitizen.fastmail.fm is filled in in the next Compose screen as the From address of my Reply, despite having no alias or default personality telling it to do so. Why does it do this?

If jcitizen@fastmail.fm is one of your personalities then all SubDomain addressing will show up in the From: like anything@jcitizen.fastmail.fm

Quote:

Our apologies to anyone at fastmail actually using the name"you." Any suggestions as to how to inform the general forum user some standard names to use in examples when referring to random addresses or plus addresses?

Jeremy shows examples of what to use in his following post.

http://www.emaildiscussions.com/...6888#post96888

Hope that helps.

Sherry

PS > Congrats on your Graduation to Member

spruce · 9 Sep 2005, 08:19 AM

Thanks for the reply! I followed the thread and coincidentally it mentions that the real jcitizen goes to a "spam trap" - hey that sounds alot better than something like Extreme Pre-Sieve Reject - how do I get one for my virtual domain?

**Sherry** · 9 Sep 2005, 09:36 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by spruce
I have 2 personalities and no aliases, however, if, for example and hypothetically speaking, I sign up for a Discover card, give them a random address, say [edited email]Discover at you dot fastmail.fm[/edited email] and make a Discover folder, when email is gathered into that folder and I hit reply, [edited email]Discover at you dot fastmail.fm[/edited email] is filled in in the next Compose screen as the From address of my Reply, despite having no alias or default personality telling it to do so. Why does it do this?

Might be a misunderstanding here. If you don't have an Alias or Username for "jcitizen" or in your example "you" then no matter what the start of the subdomain is, like Discover, then you would never even get the mail. (I may have answered your earlier question wrong when using my example of jcitizen?)

Sherry

spruce · 9 Sep 2005, 09:59 AM

Thanks again, Sherry!

I believe your previous post answered my question. Using the better email name convention, I think it may just be nomenclature. Let's call jcitizen the "account" i.e. the main thing that you pay for. It is actually optional to set up a personality for this, which I have never done, and aliases are also optional. Apparently the existence of the account is enough to automatically fill in the "discover" part if you have a "discover" folder while using jcitizen with subdomain addressing like discover@jcitizen.fastmail.fm (I haven't tried it without the folder yet.)

Something I was trying to say is: wouldn't it be nice if one could get forwarded or redirected email to work like this when replying, not just folders in your "subdomain."

**Sherry** · 9 Sep 2005, 10:20 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by spruce
Apparently the existence of the account is enough to automatically fill in the "discover" part if you have a "discover" folder while using jcitizen with subdomain addressing like discover@jcitizen.fastmail.fm (I haven't tried it without the folder yet.)

Actually, anything addressed to "anything"@jcitizen.fastmail.fm will go to your Inbox "unless" you have a folder named "anything". So if no discover folder is made then discover@jcitizen.fastmail.fm will go to your inbox.

Sherry

spruce · 9 Sep 2005, 11:41 AM

Ok, I just tested it without a folder, and the subdomain address discover@jcitizen.fastmail.fm does indeed go to your inbox if you do not have a folder, and furthermore, if you read the email and hit reply, the From field in the next compose screen is filled in automatically with discover@jcitizen.fastmail.fm. So if the email is sent directly to discover@jcitizen.fastmail.fm by Discover (or whomever they eventually decide to sell their email list to) then the From field is filled in this way regardless of whether you had set up a folder to collect it.

If however, you had set up an external account, like janedoe@spamcop.net and given that to Discover, and have it redirected to discover@jcitizen.fastmail.fm, then when you read any email and hit reply (whether in a folder or in your inbox) it does not fill in janedoe@spamcop.net in the From field of the compose screen as it should, but rather it put in whatever email address is in your default personality. If SMTP is at fault for this, can we work around it, or must we replace SMTP? If not SMTP then is something simpler (like my brain when its too late) at fault?

**Sherry** · 9 Sep 2005, 12:17 PM

Well, my guess is it wouldn't put the spamcop add in the From because it's not one of your Personalities... I have no idea if it would if you have a personality for it but it couldn't hurt to try that? You could send something to yourself from the external add and see if the reply shows up???

Sherry

spruce · 9 Sep 2005, 01:23 PM

Yes, if I'm in the Inbox, I have to manually select the Personality. If I have a Folder associated with the Personality as well, it is completely automatic. So that is a good solution.

It seems to be easier just to change the From address manually than to set up a Personality and a Folder, unless I reply to the source alot.

rjlov · 29 Oct 2005, 05:42 PM

On www.fastmail.fm/beta/ we've implemented some behaviour that sets the From: of your reply to the X-Delivered-To header, but ONLY if the X-Delivered-To address also appears in the To: or Cc: headers. If not, then it uses the previous behaviour.

The theory behind this is that if the address appears in To or Cc then it is information that is already known by the sender.

This means that most of the time, it should pick an appropriate From: for you.

This still won't help you if you're getting Bccs to an address for which you have no personality of course, but then you're no worse off than you were yesterday.

Cheers,
Richard.

JRobert · 30 Oct 2005, 04:08 AM

Cool! But can't we also assume the sender knows the XDT: address, even if the message did come as a bcc:? I don't understand what this exception is designed to do or prevent.

-jeff-

rjlov · 31 Oct 2005, 08:05 AM

The sender doesn't necessarily know the XDT because the message may have come via a forwarding service. This caused people who use such services to become upset when we tried this earlier.

An example is when somebody sends mail to you via your Sourceforge username. XDT will be your fastmail address, but the original sender didn't know that address. So, in this case, we would like to ignore XDT, and see if we can find a personality that matches the addresses in the headers (in my case, I have a Sourceforge personality).

Of course, you can always override the from address for a particular message, but it's very nice when the system just does what you want, without you having to think about it.

Richard.

JRobert · 31 Oct 2005, 08:09 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by rjlov
The sender doesn't necessarily know the XDT because the message may have come via a forwarding service. This caused people who use such services to become upset when we tried this earlier.

An example is when somebody sends mail to you via your Sourceforge username. XDT will be your fastmail address, but the original sender didn't know that address. So, in this case, we would like to ignore XDT, and see if we can find a personality that matches the addresses in the headers (in my case, I have a Sourceforge personality).

Of course, you can always override the from address for a particular message, but it's very nice when the system just does what you want, without you having to think about it.

Richard.

Ahh, I see. I didn't think about mail that might have been forwarded. Thanks for the explanation.

-jeff-

30 Aug 2005, 12:16 PM	#18
spruce Member Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Boston Posts: 38	Not so: I have 2 personalities and no aliases, however, if, for example and hypothetically speaking, I sign up for a Discover card, give them a random address, say [edited email]Discover at you dot fastmail.fm[/edited email] and make a Discover folder, when email is gathered into that folder and I hit reply, [edited email]Discover at you dot fastmail.fm[/edited email] is filled in in the next Compose screen as the From address of my Reply, despite having no alias or default personality telling it to do so. Why does it do this? Whatever the reason is, I would like to explore duplicating this excellent behavior for email redirected to fastmail from another one of my email boxes. I can see how this could be problematic in the case of redirect from elsewhere as it is not in fastmail's control, and is in fact general SMTP protocol for privacy reasons not to include any trace of the address an email is sent to in the headers of BCC'd email. <rant> I believe the reasons are historically due to AOLusers forwarding email to newsgroups with a false expectation of privacy, and then the redirect function being an extension of forwarding. A problem with SMTP is that anything you suggest for verifying spoofed email addresses would be used by spammers for harvesting valid email addresses much faster than it would be used by the general user to stop spammers. Even an immediate bounce by an SMTP server for no user here might be used subtractively by a rougue SMTP server for subtractively gathering valid emails at a given domain. If fastmail has a solution for this type of information gathering dictionary attack, they should at least reassure potential virtual domain (via MX record pointing to fastmail) customers that they have solved this, if not necessarily describing to the world exactly how. </rant> <unrelated topic> Our apologies to anyone at fastmail actually using the name"you." Any suggestions as to how to inform the general forum user some standard names to use in examples when referring to random addresses or plus addresses? </unrelated topic> <rant> <unrelated topic> Anyone in the know about XML what the actual most popular XML tags would be for "rant" and "unrelated topic" or did I guess right? If I were serious I should have started my post with an XML reference to the standard I was usiing, right? A problem with XML is that, theoretically even if fastmail agreed to host this XML reference, it would have to promise Never to delete or put anything else at that URL, or indeed Never to change the contents of the XML reference URL as it would forever represent a certain XML protocol version. As I learned when delphi.com sold its domain name out from under many decade old, loyal, paying email customers, a company should technically and legally never promise this. </unrelated topic> </rant> < bannable activity> OOh, I graduated from Junior Memeber to Member! Only took me four years! Sorry all you Moderators for any trolling I've done, but some users only have time to focus on one issue. Have I ranked anyone's ignore list? Or is it the more likely answer that you are all genuinely busy? </bannable activity> Last edited by spruce : 9 Sep 2005 at 08:15 AM.

9 Sep 2005, 08:19 AM	#20
spruce Member Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Boston Posts: 38	Thanks for the reply! I followed the thread and coincidentally it mentions that the real jcitizen goes to a "spam trap" - hey that sounds alot better than something like Extreme Pre-Sieve Reject - how do I get one for my virtual domain? Last edited by spruce : 9 Sep 2005 at 09:46 AM.

26 Aug 2005, 01:19 PM	#16
spruce Member Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Boston Posts: 38	I am confused. When I hit reply, the resulting TO address is always from the FROM address of the mail I'm replying to. I can see how using X-Delivered-To would be bad. So why, when I hit reply, do I sometimes get the resulting FROM address filled in automatically from the TO address of the mail I'm replying to, and sometimes It's fillled in from the default Personality? (using the web interface) Does it have to do with folders overriding Personalities in some cases?

9 Sep 2005, 09:59 AM	#22
spruce Member Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Boston Posts: 38	Thanks again, Sherry! I believe your previous post answered my question. Using the better email name convention, I think it may just be nomenclature. Let's call jcitizen the "account" i.e. the main thing that you pay for. It is actually optional to set up a personality for this, which I have never done, and aliases are also optional. Apparently the existence of the account is enough to automatically fill in the "discover" part if you have a "discover" folder while using jcitizen with subdomain addressing like discover@jcitizen.fastmail.fm (I haven't tried it without the folder yet.) Something I was trying to say is: wouldn't it be nice if one could get forwarded or redirected email to work like this when replying, not just folders in your "subdomain."

9 Sep 2005, 11:41 AM	#24
spruce Member Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Boston Posts: 38	Ok, I just tested it without a folder, and the subdomain address discover@jcitizen.fastmail.fm does indeed go to your inbox if you do not have a folder, and furthermore, if you read the email and hit reply, the From field in the next compose screen is filled in automatically with discover@jcitizen.fastmail.fm. So if the email is sent directly to discover@jcitizen.fastmail.fm by Discover (or whomever they eventually decide to sell their email list to) then the From field is filled in this way regardless of whether you had set up a folder to collect it. If however, you had set up an external account, like janedoe@spamcop.net and given that to Discover, and have it redirected to discover@jcitizen.fastmail.fm, then when you read any email and hit reply (whether in a folder or in your inbox) it does not fill in janedoe@spamcop.net in the From field of the compose screen as it should, but rather it put in whatever email address is in your default personality. If SMTP is at fault for this, can we work around it, or must we replace SMTP? If not SMTP then is something simpler (like my brain when its too late) at fault?

9 Sep 2005, 12:17 PM	#25
Sherry Moderator Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: USA Posts: 8,687	Well, my guess is it wouldn't put the spamcop add in the From because it's not one of your Personalities... I have no idea if it would if you have a personality for it but it couldn't hurt to try that? You could send something to yourself from the external add and see if the reply shows up??? Sherry

9 Sep 2005, 01:23 PM	#26
spruce Member Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Boston Posts: 38	Yes, if I'm in the Inbox, I have to manually select the Personality. If I have a Folder associated with the Personality as well, it is completely automatic. So that is a good solution. It seems to be easier just to change the From address manually than to set up a Personality and a Folder, unless I reply to the source alot.

29 Oct 2005, 05:42 PM	#27
rjlov Essential Contributor Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Melbourne, Australia Posts: 282 Representative of: Fastmail.FM	On www.fastmail.fm/beta/ we've implemented some behaviour that sets the From: of your reply to the X-Delivered-To header, but ONLY if the X-Delivered-To address also appears in the To: or Cc: headers. If not, then it uses the previous behaviour. The theory behind this is that if the address appears in To or Cc then it is information that is already known by the sender. This means that most of the time, it should pick an appropriate From: for you. This still won't help you if you're getting Bccs to an address for which you have no personality of course, but then you're no worse off than you were yesterday. Cheers, Richard.

30 Oct 2005, 04:08 AM	#28
JRobert Master of the @ Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: New Hampshire, USA Posts: 1,561	Cool! But can't we also assume the sender knows the XDT: address, even if the message did come as a bcc:? I don't understand what this exception is designed to do or prevent. -jeff-

31 Oct 2005, 08:05 AM	#29
rjlov Essential Contributor Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Melbourne, Australia Posts: 282 Representative of: Fastmail.FM	The sender doesn't necessarily know the XDT because the message may have come via a forwarding service. This caused people who use such services to become upset when we tried this earlier. An example is when somebody sends mail to you via your Sourceforge username. XDT will be your fastmail address, but the original sender didn't know that address. So, in this case, we would like to ignore XDT, and see if we can find a personality that matches the addresses in the headers (in my case, I have a Sourceforge personality). Of course, you can always override the from address for a particular message, but it's very nice when the system just does what you want, without you having to think about it. Richard.