Re: Mail Cookies

On Thu, Feb 12, 2004 at 02:13:56PM +0000, John Berthels wrote:
> 
> If I understand correctly, you intend the cookie as a (semi-permanent)
> instruction to the recipient's MUA to include the cookie in mails to your
> address and/or your domain, in order to help "file" the response
> efficiently at your end.


Yes, exactly. :-)



> I can see some potential use in this, but wouldn't it be better to have a
> method to instruct your local mail system to perform the same filing
> actions on all email from that particular address? Particularly since the
> recipient may change MUA?
>
> Have I understood correctly? Would address filtering give you what you
> expect to get from such a cookie?


You understood perfectly what I want to do. :-)

But address filtering would not do the same for some reasons:

- The mail address is not secret. As long as we don't have a
  spoofing protection, anyone can fake it. E.g. if this is used
  to give you posting access to a mailing list, anyone would 
  know your e-mail address, but you would know the cookie only.
  
- At least the german privacy laws do not allow to have databases
  of individual data - such as e-mail addresses - under all
  circumstances. 


regards
Hadmut