help changing the From address when sending email

[Richard Gaskin]

I don't know if this will help the OP's situation, but here I have a 
number of apps that need to send email notifications, and some of them 
are running on systems that have no email server installed. Most of 
these are for server monitoring so I'm the only recipient, but maybe the 
general idea may be useful:

I set up a CGI on one system that I want the emails to be sent from 
(which happens to also be written in LC, but it could be Perl, PHP, 
Python, bash, etc.) which accepts a recipient address, subject, and 
body, along with an obscure hash used for authentication, and puts those 
together to send the email from there.

The CGI itself is named very obscurely (e.g. something like 
"gfdRRth88ewLYKss.cgi"), so it's unlikely to be guessed by any spiders. 
  And even if it were, anyone attempting to use the CGI for spamming 
would also need to figure out the hash inputs, and there are enough 
zombied Win installs that there are easier ways to hijack machines; this 
one just isn't worth the effort :)

Not bullet-proof (nothing is), but reasonably secure and super-easy to 
use.  Now I have a single location for notifications that I can use from 
any client or server process that needs to send email, without even 
needing to have an email server installed.  Sending notifications is a 
one-liner anywhere I need 'em.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com


Ralph DiMola wrote:
> I thought sending email was an easy thing. It turns out in this spam/virus
> world we live it gets more complicated.
>
> First of all sending messages with a "from" other than your on-rev master
> address is technically "spoofing". This is done legitimately all the time
> with consultants running a server process on behalf of their customers.
> There are several things one can do to prevent spam filters from having
> heart failure.
>
> 1) Put a "mailfrom:ACCOUNTNAME at SERVERNAME.on-rev.com" in the email header.
> This give spam filters a valid path back to the on-rev server.
> ACCOUNTNAME = master on-rev email address(login username)
> SERVERNAME = Server name (i.e. diesel, thor....)
>
> 2) Put a "from:SPOOFEDADDRESS at SOMECOMPANY.com" in the email header.
> SPOOFEDADDRESS at SOMECOMPANY.com = is the email address you want the recipient
> to see. It should be a valid email.
>
> 3) put a "Message-Id: <UNIQUE-ID at SOMECOMPANY.com>" in the email header.
> UNIQUE-ID = I use the LC uuid
>
> 4) put a "Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2015 22:48:57 +0200" in the email header. LC
> Example: ("Date:" && the internet date)
>
> 5) put a "Subject: MY SUBJECT" in the email header.
>
> 5) If the email is html then also include a text version also. Not including
> a text version will up your spam score.
>
> 6) A short email body will up your spam score.
>
> 7) Non https images or links will up your spam score.
>
> 8) add a spf txt record to your DNS. This is not a show stopper. See
> https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-an-spf-record-to
> -prevent-spoofing-improve-e-mail-reliability for example. I am not vouching
> for this site it's just an example. Do a "spf txt record examples" search
> for more information.
>
> There are on-line tools to test your spam score. Paste in the
> email(including headers) and see your score.
>
> Before I did all this my X-AntiAbuse spam score was 12 out of 10. All my
> email was flagged as spam. By doing the above steps (sans the spf thingy) I
> lowered it to -0.3
>
> I am not an email expert and I'm sure this score could be lowered even more
> with more header tweaking but this get my emails delivered and not put into
> junk mail folders.
>
> I have done some major re-working of the example sendmail script. Let me
> know if you would like me to send you my updated version. You may have to
> change a few things to make it your own.
>
> Ralph DiMola
> IT Director
> Evergreen Information Services
> rdimola at evergreeninfo.net
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: use-livecode [mailto:use-livecode-bounces at lists.runrev.com] On Behalf
> Of Theresa
> Sent: Saturday, October 10, 2015 2:03 PM
> To: use-livecode at lists.runrev.com
> Subject: help changing the From address when sending email
>
>
>
> I'm creating an app that needs to send an email to the user. I've gone
> through the lesson about sending email through LiveCode Server here
> http://lessons.runrev.com/m/4070/l/8184-sending-emails-from-livecode-server-
> scripts
> and I get the email to send but no matter what I seem to do, I can't get the
> "from" address to be anything but my server account email. Is there
> something I'm missing? I've tried it using a variable and also just putting
> a straight email address in but I can't get it to change.