From owner-freebsd-isp Wed Jun 18 09:22:38 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id JAA25394 for isp-outgoing; Wed, 18 Jun 1997 09:22:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rainey.blueneptune.com (root@rainey.blueneptune.com [207.104.147.225]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id JAA25382 for ; Wed, 18 Jun 1997 09:22:28 -0700 (PDT) From: michael@blueneptune.com Received: (from michael@localhost) by rainey.blueneptune.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) id JAA18842; Wed, 18 Jun 1997 09:23:02 -0700 Message-Id: <199706181623.JAA18842@rainey.blueneptune.com> Subject: Re: Does anyone filter e-mail headers To: rif@nix.kconline.com (Jim Riffle) Date: Wed, 18 Jun 1997 09:23:01 -0700 (PDT) Cc: freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: from "Jim Riffle" at Jun 18, 97 09:31:07 am Reply-To: michael@blueneptune.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24 ME8b] Content-Type: text Sender: owner-isp@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > Does anyone out their use any kind of filtering mechanism for peoples > incoming mail to strip the routing information from incoming e-mail? The > other day I had a customer who though it was just terrible that we did > not filter off all that information for them. I would never filter those headers. They can be extremely helpful for tracking down problems, especially when you get the inevitable complaint "My friend sent this four days ago, and I just got it today. Why are you delaying my mail?" A quick look at the Received headers will show who the most likely culprit is (and it's usually the sending site, the most common being a holdup in the internal forwarding of larger companies.) Besides, most end-user client email software these days will simply not display all of these headers when the user is reading mail. That's the proper place for filtering them --- just don't display them to the user! How different packages do this varies quite a bit --- some will let the user configure what headers are displayed, others just always filter everything except From/Subject/Date/To. Some even make it virtually -impossible- to see the headers. I'd recommend that you talk to your customer about various options in mail clients, and help him find one that filters headers the way he wants. -- Michael Bryan michael@blueneptune.com