Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 00:08:22 -0500
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
From: "Barry L. Newton" <bnewton at ashcomp.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Email geekery
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

Ok, here's a question for all the mailer experts out there:

Tonight I was setting up a Paypal account for a neighborhood
organization.  Part of the process involved them sending an email with a
link and a magic number (for not-hypertext mailers) which you are expected
to click on to verify that you actually are the person you claim to be.

Well,  we wanted to jigger the system a bit, and set up an email forwarding
account at the ISP, which would send all Paypal related email directly to
the treasurer of the organization.

Waited for hours, got no email.  I tested the account--it forwarded mail
just fine.  Told Paypal to try again.  Several times.  No email.

Finally, out of desperation, I turned the forwarding account into a real
mailbox, and told Paypal to try again  (fortunately an automated process--a
human being would have told me where to get off, by now).  Seconds later,
the confirmation email was in the newly created mailbox.  Clicked on their
link, and everything went through just fine.

Question is, how did they do that?  It's the same freakin' email
address.  Is there some kind of code you can hide in an email that
says:  "Do n't forward me?  Google brought no satisfaction here, and I
don't quite care enough to read 30 years worth of RFC's about mail processing.

It's annoying, because now I'm going to have to go teach the treasurer's
Mac how to read from a second--and different--mail host than what she uses
now.  At some risk of doing harm. . .This *shouldn't* be all that
difficult, but we both wanted to avoid monkeying with her machine.

Barry