Re: header-munging

[[e-mail]]

On 24 Sep 1996 17:28:52 -0400, Keith Moore <[e-mail]> wrote:

> It's not possible in general (or even widely feasible) to determine
> the sender's user name or domain given the IP address from which a
> message was submitted.  Many environments do not do static IP address
> assignment; others share PCs or workstations between several people.
> And given the scarcity of IPv4 address space, it's not a solution we
> want to encourage.

But many ISPs can determine user identity from the dynamic IP address,
since they authenticated that user and assigned that IP address.


> In fact, your messages provide a convenient example as to why having
> submission agents do message fixup should be strongly discouraged.
>
> ] To: <[e-mail]>,
> ] <[e-mail]>,
> ]         <[e-mail]>
>
> By attempting to compensate for your UA or gateway's incorrect
> configuration (i.e. lack of knowledge of your return address), your
> SMTP server has damaged several perfectly valid addresses.

Actually, I manually percent-hacked the addresses, because the firewall
prevents the SMTP server I am using (the one my user agent talks to)
from opening an outbound SMTP port.  I have to percent-hack to force it
to route the messages such that they arrive at a server which is
authorized to open an outbound SMTP connection.  (The server does have
an option that forces such routing, but there is a bug in it, so I
resort to manual percent-hacking until the bug is fixed *sigh*).

This is actually a case where the server would correct my return address
(from "randy@mpa15ab" to "[e-mail]") and everything
would be fine, but for the firewall and a different bug in the server
routing override options.



--
|Randall Gellens             |                    [e-mail]|
|[phone]              | fax [phone] can add ,,,,,,,,6350|
|Opinions are personal;  facts are suspect;   I speak only for myself|