"Big mark" said in news:
[email protected]:
Hi all
Can anyone help.I am getting I-mails addressed to my address with the
name changed at the front. My name is mark.
So my address may be (e-mail address removed) but I am getting them for
(e-mail address removed) or (e-mail address removed) or anybodies first name but the rest
of the address is mine.
Can you help
Cheers
mark
A sender can put anything they want in the To:, CC:, and BCC: headers but
that doesn't mean the e-mail gets sent there. That is part of the sender's
*data* that gets included in the DATA command sent to their mail server
(SMTP). Where the e-mail gets delivered depends on the destination the
e-mail client specifies in the RCPT command it sends to the mail server.
You have the e-mail client telling where to deliver the message according to
the RCPT commands it issues. The To:, CC:, Subject:, and other headers are
not used by the mail server to deliver the message - because those were part
of the message (i.e., those headers are in the data sent, not in the
commands sent).
For info on the SMTP protocol, see RFC 2821:
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/cgi-bin/rfc/rfc2821.html
For info on the Internet Message Format, see RFC 2822:
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/cgi-bin/rfc/rfc2822.html
Note that the To, CC, Subject, Reply-To, From and other headers defined in
the Internet Message Format are sent as data (i.e., as part of the message)
in the DATA command in the SMTP protocol. The sender can put anything they
want in their data. So they can put any e-mail address they want in the To
header. Hell, it doesn't even have to be an e-mail address. NOTHING in the
data gets used for delivering the e-mail. That's all done separately by the
*commands* that the e-mail client issues to the SMTP server.
When tracing an e-mail, the From and other headers that were part of the
sender's data cannot be trusted since the sender can put anything they want
in there. In fact, according to RFC 2822, section 3.6, the To, CC, Subject,
Reply-To, and Message-ID headers are all optional; i.e., they may not even
show up in the received e-mail you read. The From header is required, but
remember it is still part of the sender's data so they can put anything they
want in that header. You need to inspect the headers in the e-mail you
receive that were prepended by the SMTP server (assuming that the SMTP
server wasn't under control of the spammer).
