[AccessD] OT Outlook 2003

-----Original Message-----
> MS do get lots of things wrong with with email and are far from
> standards 
> compliant in all sorts of ways, but this time they are not completely
> at  
> fault.
> 
> RFC 2822 only says 
> <quote>
>    Though optional, every message SHOULD have a "Message-ID:" field.
> </quote>
> 
> Note that SHOULD and MUST have very specific meanings within RFCs.

Yes, and as the article I posted a link to stated this means that MS is
technically RFC compliant at least with the messageid header.  But that
doesn't change the fact that MS has decided to omit something that has
been standard in pretty much every mail client for the better part of 20
years.  Someone also pointed out that it doesn't say MAY which would be
optional, but SHOULD.  ie they recommend that you use it.

Also note that the messageid header is only removed when you send via a
non-Exchange mail server.  If you use MS Exchange there is no issue.

The position MS takes appears to be along the lines of:
"...Microsoft's position [is] that they expect all mail servers to
whitelist outgoing mail from Outlook 2003 users and add a Message-ID
header to fill in the one that Outlook omits."

> In that case the admin who set up the server should be shot. A
> MessageID is 
> NOT a requirement header.
> 
> RFC 2822:
> <quote>
>    The only required header fields are the origination date field and
>    the originator address field(s).  All other header fields are
>    syntactically optional. 
> </quote>

I can't give stats on this but it would be interesting to find out how
many server apps have the default or options to drop email without
specific headers.  

It also doesn't change the anti-spam scoring rules (Spam assassin for
example is used by a lot of email servers) that would classify OL2003 as spam.

Ultimately it is the server operator that decides a lot of this stuff. 
I've come across annoying rules before where someone I tried to contact
used a server that refused all mail from Hong Kong, classifying the entire
country ip range as spam generating.  I used other means in the end.

Besides for my own personal use if it is increasing common for a specific
header such as the messageid to be required, then I am not going to go out
of my way to use an email client that doesn't generate it.  RFC compliant
or not.  So I'm sticking with OL XP.