[META] please start To: with gnupg-users at gnupg.org, i.e.: To: gnupg-users at gnupg.org

[Peter Lebbing]

On 28/01/12 12:49, gerry lowry +1 705 250-0112 alliston ontario canada wrote:
> (d)   To: 
>       Cc: gnupg-users at gnupg.org
> [...]
> (d) is the worst form imho because e-mails without a To: component
> are the most likely to end up in one's spam folder; in some cases,
> depending on one's isp, such e-mails might not even be delivered
> to one's client pc, i.e., they might be rejected at some mail
> server's gateway.

This is a heuristic: RFC2822/RFC5322 do not require the field to be present, but
if there isn't one, it increases the probability the mail is spam. Rejecting a
mail for not having this field, while the rest doesn't look very spammy, is
overly zealous, and I would be upset with the person who installed such a filter
on my mailbox.

In the default SpamAssassin setup, it seems not having a To:-field is one point
towards the 5 points needed to be marked as spam. Note that other aspects might
deduct points and you can end up negative (which is a good thing).

> FWIW, e-mail does not really have a To:, Cc:, or Bcc: field;
> all three are embellishments added by the e-mail client software.
> Behind the scenes, To:, Cc:, and Bcc: are ALL simply RCPT-TO.

You are confusing different layers. SMTP doesn't care about those fields, but
the "Internet Message Format" RFC's, 2822 and 5322 do. You are confusing
envelope with letter. Furthermore, SMTP genuinely doesn't care about those
fields, they are not mapped to RCPT TO:. RCPT TO: is part of the envelope, and
handed to SMTP, it does not deduct them from the fields. The mapping is these
days usually performed by the e-mail client software, which you did not consider
to be behind the scenes, apparently.

Peter.

PS: You should look for a better solution to filter/order your mails into their
proper locations if your current solution cares about order of addressees. There
is no order in those, and any order needed by a filter is IMHO a bug.
Personally, I use the Sieve language to tell my IMAP server what to do :).

if address ["to", "cc", "bcc", "resent-to"] "gnupg-users.org" {
  fileinto "GnuPG-Users";
}

This is a deliberately suboptimal filter; I just use the List-ID as Remco suggested.

-- 
I use the GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG) in combination with Enigmail.
You can send me encrypted mail if you want some privacy.
My key is available at http://wwwhome.cs.utwente.nl/~lebbing/pubkey.txt