[Discuss] [POSSIBLE SPAM] Spam

[brendan]

the To: field in an email message is not actually used to deliver the
message - it's just an informational field for the recipient and may not
be accurate if the sender is lazy.

delivery is actually controlled by the smtp envelope rcpt to, which is
often added as the Delivered-To: header inside a message by the
receiving smtp server.

an smtp transaction would look something like:

< 220 mail.blah.blah.com SMTP
> helo i.am.a.pony
< 250 mail.blah.blah.blah
> mail from:<brendan at ming.org>
< 250 2.1.0 Ok
> rcpt to:<b at b.com>
< 250 2.1.5 Ok
> data
< 354 End data with <CR><LF>.<CR><LF>
< Subject: Blah blah blah
< From: <lies at ming.org>
< To: <nobody at ming.org>
<
< blah blah blah
< .
> 250 Ok Queued as fang38_fb8422e34747

the rcpt to command determines who the mail is going to, mail from is
who is was sent from. the From and To in the data/headers section are
irrelevant.

however, spam filters will try and take a discrepancy between the
envelope mail to and message header To and score messages that don't
match as more likely to be spam.

On 16-05-14 09:50 AM, Deryk Barker (Honorary Colleague) wrote:
> You are on a Bcc list?
> 
> -------
> Deryk Barker, Faculty Emeritus
> Computer Science Department
> Camosun College, Victoria BC
> 
> ________________________________________
> From: Discuss [discuss-bounces at vlug.org] on behalf of John Blomfield [jabfield at shaw.ca]
> Sent: Saturday, May 14, 2016 9:19 AM
> To: discuss at vlug.org
> Subject: [POSSIBLE SPAM]  [Discuss] Spam
> 
> I have recently been receiving spam emails which is not unusual but
> these emails are not addressed to my email address but to someone
> else's. There does not seem to be any link to my email address in the
> header. How is it possible for these emails to end up in my inbox?
> 
> Any ideas anyone?
> 
> John
> 
> --
> John Blomfield
> Delivered by Thunderbird Email on Linux OpenSuse-KDE4
> 
> 
> 
> 
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