vdberghee said:
How come that the sender of some e-mails is marked in the Inbox with
the full e-mail address and for some others only with the name of the
sender. And this whether the sender is in the Outlook address book or
not. Same distinction appears with quotes: when are there quotes
around the sender's name or address in the 'From' field ? There seems
to be no logic at all..?
The sender chooses what text to insert into the From field. It is not
really a header but is instead part of the data that sender issues in
the DATA command to the SMTP server. Most ISPs require that a From
field exist in the e-mail but it can be blank, the recipient's e-mail
address, a bogus e-mail address, the sender's e-mail address, a string
like "!!! GET MORE LIFE !!!", or whatever the sender wants. Just
because Outlook restricts you from defining an account with a blank Name
or a blank E-mail address doesn't mean someone cannot use a different
e-mail client that does allow blanks. And just because Outlook requires
that you enter something in these fields so they are non-blank, it
doesn't check that the name you enter is really for you or that the
e-mail address you enter is valid or even an e-mail address. You could
specify Name = "New from Spam-R-Us" with an e-mail address of "How to
increase the size of your ... um ... floppy" (you'll get a warning that
you can override). There has never been a guarantee that the sender
provides a valid e-mail address in the From or Reply-To headers. Why do
you think spam still lives if they were easily trackable?
