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E-mail headers | 396 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
E-mail headers
Authored by: Ed L. on Tuesday, April 24 2012 @ 01:13 PM EDT
That was rare, Boise lost his temper.
Boies asked an hostile witness an hostile question and got an hostile answer. Poor guy.

[shrug]

---
Real Programmers mangle their own memory.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

E-mail headers
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, April 24 2012 @ 01:23 PM EDT
And yes it's common for mail servers to require a login but not record that information. My own uses a pretty standard Postfix configuration, and while you need to authenticate with a username and password to be able to relay mail through it (send mail to a domain other than one it handles itself) the server doesn't record the username in the headers. Given what's in the headers I could look back in the server logs to find out the user who sent the message, but just from the headers alone I couldn't tell you more than the IP address that submitted the message.

Maybe I'm running a later version of Postfix, but my copy does record the authenticated sender. I also DKIM sign all outgoing emails.

Apart from that, I totally agree, and would go further to ask to see server logs to confirm where the email came from. Otherwise, it really is just words on paper.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

  • E-mail headers - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, April 24 2012 @ 02:22 PM EDT
E-mail headers
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, April 24 2012 @ 01:33 PM EDT
I used to tell people "it's no different from the return
address on a snailmail envelope, the sender can write
whatever he wants and nobody ever checks it", but that never
seemed to sink in. Maybe most people assume they'd get in
trouble if they ever forged a return address on physical
postage (you might, if you used it to avoid paying postage
or for some other kind of fraud, but the odds of getting
caught are low) so they don't want to think about how easy
it is in the physical world.
So now I just show them. I ask the domain name of their
school or business, use a Telnet client to connect to their
mail server on the standard SMTP port, and a few seconds
later they've got mail in their inbox from
GOD_HIMSELF@their_own_home_institution.tld

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

indents are off == quoted?
Authored by: xtifr on Tuesday, April 24 2012 @ 02:20 PM EDT
The mention of the indents being off sounds to me like this might be a case
where the email is quoted by someone else. Some email agents use indentation
for that. And if that's what he meant, then yeah, I'd want to see the
original.

For the general case of the-email-might-be-edited, well, frankly that's true of
any email. Any can edit the body or headers of an email. It's just a
plain-text file, and once it's been delivered, the headers no longer matter to
the software. If it's on a server, you can use imap to move it to a local
folder, edit the folder's raw data, and move it back. But email is generally
acceptable as evidence, so I don't think that's the issue here. That would be
uncomfortably close to evidence-tampering.

---
Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for it makes them soggy and hard to
light.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

E-mail headers
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 25 2012 @ 05:28 AM EDT
I am surprised an email is expected to prove anything, especially in a paper
form at as would have been presented in court.

An email is just text. One can easily fake an email to say anything and get the
indentation 100% perfect.

Some years ago, my young nephew was going to spend Christmas morning at my
house. Young Michael was worried that Santa would not know to deliver his
presents to the alternate address. I told him I would take care of it and a
couple of weeks later, produced what looked like a totally authentic Microsoft
Outlook email print as proof. It showed an email being sent from me to the North
Pole, it being forwarded to Santa's Despatch Department, a bit of too-ing and
fro-ing between Dispatch and the Warehouse, and finally a confirmation of a
change in delivery address complete with Michael's account number. Had it been
presented in court, it would have had an equal standing as any other email
prinout. Only one's disbelief in Santa would have raised questions as to its
authenticity.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

  • E-mail headers - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 25 2012 @ 03:03 PM EDT
E-mail headers
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 25 2012 @ 08:34 AM EDT
Oh, please. I could pick your pocket, steal your car keys, and plant a human
head in your trunk. But if you get caught with a head in your trunk, if you
didn't put it there, you'd better be able to explain how it got there without
getting all "theoretical" about it.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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