Re: [Exim] AOL X-Mailer Filtering Change

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Author: Kevin P. Fleming
Date:  
To: Suresh Ramasubramanian
CC: Exim-users
Subject: Re: [Exim] AOL X-Mailer Filtering Change
Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:
>
> Nitpick: Mail *clients* generally insert an X-Mailer header.
>
> AOL has enough mail pushing to do that it is not likely to bother parsing
> client info for the version number and stamping X-Mailer headers at the
> server side.
>
> Maybe cracked copies of AOL, or maybe AOL doesn't insert a consistent
> X-Mailer line from build to build.
>
>         srs


Ahh, but you missed an important point in my message; in a stream of six
messages from the _same_ user on the _same_ computer (in a two hour
period), four of them were missing "AOL" in the X-Mailer header and two
were not.

My suspicion is that because the AOL mail client is not actually an
RFC-based client at all, it has no knowledge of headers. It just sends
the message into AOL's "mail system" in whatever internal format they
use. If the message has to leave that system to go to the 'Net, then
another process gets involved to convert it to RFC-compliant mail (thus
becoming the real "mail client"), and there is some reason why this
additional process does not insert consistent X-Mailer headers now.