EMAIL ROUTING

[Mathias Koerber]

To: and Cc: headers inside emails are *not* used for email
routing.

The SMTP protocol specifies that the sender indicate the recipient to the
mailserver using the MAIL for: command. Thus, no To: and CC: headers are
actually required to send mail. (eg , if a mail is Bcc (blind CC) to another
recipient,
his email is also not listed in any headers, and only passed to the
mailserver in the
SMTP dialogue).

This also allows mailing lists to keep the To: header pointing to the
mailing list,
while actua;y delivering the email to each member of the list.

This 'envelope' recipient, is (if the receiving mailserver is properly
configured)
usually logged in the Received header as 'for ...'

Spammers like to use this method to avoid some methods of filtering.

regards
-----Original Message-----
From: Lawrence Chan <webmaster at montevino.com>
To: bind-users at isc.org <bind-users at isc.org>
Date: Saturday, June 19, 1999 6:49 PM
Subject: EMAIL ROUTING


|
|Hello,
|
|I sometimes received some emails that only have a sender id and no
|destination id.  How could my email server pick them up when it does not
|have recipient ids to match with the mailbox accounts?  Are these spam
|mails some sort of broadcast emails where all the mail servers on the
|net supposedly would pick them up automatically?
|
|Lawrence Chan
|lchan at montevino.com
|