#1395 ✓resolved
John Y

Wrong sender address used when replying to mailing list

Reported by John Y | February 2nd, 2016 @ 01:24 PM

I am a member of a mailing list (example@lists.example.com) using the address "jy@example.com". This is not my primary email address. The list sets a "Reply-To: example@lists.example.com" in each post, as replies are intended to go to the list.

When I reply to a list message, the sender address is my primary address, NOT jy@example.com. If I don't catch this, my reply gets rejected as my primary address is not a member of the list. I have to do this each time.

I cannot find a way to explicitly say "when sending mail to example@lists.example.com, set sender address to jy@example.com". I change the address manually each time, but MailMate does not learn the correct behaviour from this.

Suggestion: MailMate should have a method of explicitly specifying what sender address should be used for a particular recipient, without having to change it each time.

Additional bonus suggestion (probably a lot harder to do!): MailMate should note when it is being overridden, and learn the correct behaviour if a particular change is made frequently. In this example, after having changed the sender address in the reply 3 or 4 times, MailMate should automatically get it right on the 5th reply.

This is like Windows does if you create a shortcut to a file, and then rename the shortcut to remove the "Shortcut to " part of the name — after doing this 3 or 4 times, shortcuts no longer have this prefix on creation.

Comments and changes to this ticket

  • benny

    benny February 2nd, 2016 @ 02:04 PM

    • State changed from “new” to “resolved”

    If I understand correctly then this should work if you simply tell MailMate about your email alias. You do this by adding it to the “Email Address(es)” field in the IMAP account settings. It's a comma separated list.

    Alternatively, if you never use this address for new message then you can add it to the Address Pattern instead. Read more here.

  • John Y

    John Y February 2nd, 2016 @ 03:24 PM

    No, the address is in the email addresses list. When sending a reply to this particular mailing list, though, MailMate consistently defaults to the wrong entry in that list.

    I'm wondering if MailMate is looking at the value of From: when I hit the reply button, and ignoring the fact that there's a Reply-To: overriding it — the addresses picked usually match what I use for personal emails to the senders.

  • benny

    benny February 2nd, 2016 @ 04:50 PM

    • State changed from “resolved” to “cantreproduce”

    Hmm, if that's the problem then it's a bug.

    You can get some debug output by launching MailMate like this:

    defaults write com.freron.MailMate MmDebugDerivedIdentity -bool YES
    /Applications/MailMate.app/Contents/MacOS/MailMate
    

    Try that and see if you get any hints. (I'm not sure the debug output is sufficiently detailed to tell exactly how the From header is derived.)

  • John Y

    John Y February 2nd, 2016 @ 05:11 PM

    Here's what I've got. (Sorry about all the redacted addresses, but I'm not really comfortable leaving real addresses on a publicly-accessible site :)

    jy@example.com is the address that's subscribed to the list, and the one I keep manually changing it to on reply.

    Warning: IMAP connection terminated during action (1002).
    Warning: IMAP connection terminated during action (1002).
    Warning: IMAP connection terminated during action (1002).
    Warning: IMAP connection terminated during action (1002).
    Warning: IMAP connection terminated during action (1002).
    Warning: IMAP connection terminated during action (1002).
    Recipient address: “example@lists.example.com”
    Delivery address:  “primary@mydomain.co.uk”
    Delivery address:  “primary@mydomain.co.uk”
    Delivery address:  “unknown”
    Delivery address:  “jy@example.com”
    Delivery address:  “jy@example.com”
    Related source:    “imap://primary@mail.example.com/Lists/Example List”
    Found match on recipient address “primary@mydomain.co.uk”.
    Identity found:
    '{  emailAddresses = "primary@mydomain.co.uk, jy@example.com, john.y@myotherdomain.co.uk, jy@myotherdomain.co.uk, john.yeates@myotherdomain.co.uk";
        name = "John Yeates";
        serverURL = "imap://primary@mail.example.com";
    }'
    Name derived: “John Yeates”
    Address derived: “primary@mydomain.co.uk”
    

    …and the relevant headers (hopefully these are enough)

    From: "Redacted" <redacted@redacted.isp.com>
    To: <example@lists.example.com>
    Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2016 21:54:46 -0000
    Reply-To: Example List <example@lists.example.com>
    List-Id: Example List <example.lists.example.com>
    
  • benny

    benny February 2nd, 2016 @ 06:59 PM

    Could you also look for any of these headers:

    x-original-to  
    x-delivered-to  
    delivered-to  
    envelope-to
    

    The headers you provided did not provide any hints that the message was related to jy@example.com.

  • John Y

    John Y February 2nd, 2016 @ 08:01 PM

    Interesting. I have these, in this order:

    X-Original-To: primary@mydomain.co.uk
    Delivered-To: primary@mydomain.co.uk
    Received: by mydomain.co.uk (Postfix, from userid 1000)
        id D77205C0366; Fri, 29 Jan 2016 21:54:02 +0000 (GMT)
    Delivered-To: unknown
    Received: from example.com (188.226.171.98:993) by
      mail.mydomain.co.uk with IMAP4-SSL; 29 Jan 2016 21:54:02 -0000
    Delivered-To: <jy@example.com>
    Received: from example.com
        by example.com (Dovecot) with LMTP id R5vhEF7fq1YYMwAAy6XGpA
        for <jy@example.com>; Fri, 29 Jan 2016 21:53:34 +0000
    Received: by example.com (Postfix, from userid 111)
        id 3646820D84; Fri, 29 Jan 2016 21:53:34 +0000 (GMT)@@@
    

    It looks like this was to do with getmail, which retrieves email from mail.example.com (delivered to jy@example.com) and injects it locally, calling /usr/bin/sendmail -i -bm primary@mydomain.co.uk.

    Changing getmail's config to call /usr/lib/dovecot/deliver instead reduces the headers to:

    Delivered-To: unknown
    Received: from example.com (188.226.171.98:993) by
      mail.mydomain.co.uk with IMAP4-SSL; 29 Jan 2016 21:54:02 -0000
    Delivered-To: <jy@example.com>
    Received: from example.com
        by example.com (Dovecot) with LMTP id R5vhEF7fq1YYMwAAy6XGpA
        for <jy@example.com>; Fri, 29 Jan 2016 21:53:34 +0000
    Received: by example.com (Postfix, from userid 111)
        id 3646820D84; Fri, 29 Jan 2016 21:53:34 +0000 (GMT)@@@
    

    and replying now works as expected. Thanks for your help!

  • benny

    benny February 2nd, 2016 @ 08:04 PM

    • State changed from “cantreproduce” to “resolved”

    Great, it now works because of this header:

    Delivered-To: <jy@example.com>
    

    Well, actually MailMate could also derive it from the Received header.

    Still looks a bit weird/wrong with this header:

    Delivered-To: unknown
    

    But it does no harm.

    (Delivery headers are badly standardized, but MailMate can use them as hints when the user has explicitly provided email addresses in the account settings.)

  • Muescha

    Muescha June 15th, 2017 @ 12:22 AM

    i have the same problem now with the mailmate mail list

    1) debug
    i set the MmDebugDerivedIdentity but there are no debug infos when i hit reply

    1a) i don't see the debug information in activity
    1b) i do help / send logs unzip the logs.tar.gz
    1c) Konsole App don't show this debug

    2) Header lines

    this are the only lines with my eMail

    Return-path: <mailmate-bounces@xxxx.xxxx.com>
    X-Envelope-to: lists-freron@myname.com
    Received: from [11.111.111.!!!] (helo=freron.com)
        by mx11.mygateway.de with esmtp (Exim 4.89)
        (envelope-from <mailmate-bounces@xxxx.xxxx.com>)
        id 1dKrUZ-xxx72a-Ur
        for lists-freron@myname.com; Tue, 13 Jun 2017 21:28:44 +0200
    

    (ps: changed some ip and email address to avoid email harvesting

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