/etc/mail/access weirdness

[Billy A. Pumphrey]

I didn't know the envelope, header, and body concept.  Thank you for
sharing it.

-----Original Message-----
From: MailScanner mailing list [mailto:MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On
Behalf Of Kevin Spicer
Sent: Monday, April 05, 2004 5:34 PM
To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: Re: /etc/mail/access weirdness

On Mon, 2004-04-05 at 23:05, Billy A. Pumphrey wrote:
> Ok, I started checking them.  I checked only about 5.  Only 1 I seen a
cc: on it.  Here is one message and header that I didn't see a cc on it
to see.
>
Don't look in the message, message headers are worthless.  Look in your
maillog to find out who the message was actually sent to.

I'm not sure you understand the envelope, headers and body concept
(forgive me for covering this if you do).  Ordinary postal mail makes a
good analogy.  When you send a letter it is conventional to put certain
details at the top (such as your address, the date) this is like the
headers in an email.  The text of the letter (on the same sheet of
paper) would be the body.  The sheet of paper with the message on is
then placed inside an envelope for passage through the postal service.
Note that the envelope is just a convenience to hold your letter
together and provide the postal workers with the information they need
to deliver it.  Now imagine you have a secretary who opens you mail and
discards the envelope before passing it to you - this is what happens
with email, the recipient never gets to se the envelope.  However it is
the envelope that determine who the mail gets delivered to, not the
contents.

Just as in the physical world it is easy to mix letters up and send them
to the wrong recipients by putting them in the wrong envelopes [yes I
have done that] it is equally easy to do similar things with email.




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