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CHANGING YOUR FROM
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Copyright © Nancy
McGough & Infinite Ink
Last modified
02-May-2005
| pine |
CHANGING YOUR FROM
|
Copyright © Nancy
McGough & Infinite Ink
Last modified
02-May-2005
“How do I change my From header?” is the most frequently asked question in Pine discussion groups. This page covers . . .
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| Note | Some service providers, for example Grex, have set up their installation of Pine so that users cannot change their From header. |
If you are using any version of PC-Pine,
specifying your From header is easy. Simply start PC-Pine, go to Main
> Setup > Config and set your personal-name,
user-id, and user-domain variables. Your default
From header will then be
From: personal-name <user-id@user-domain>
In Unix Pine, your Pine user-id variable defaults to be your Unix login name and it is not possible to change it on Pine's Main > Setup > Config screen. It is because of this missing user-id variable that the question “How do I change my From header” is so frequently asked and I, and many others, have created web pages answering this question.
Using a role is the best solution for two reasons.
Roles were introduced in Pine 4.10, which was released on 4 February 1999. If your system is using Pine 4.05 or earlier, please ask your system administrator to upgrade to the current Pine (4.63) so you can 1] use roles, 2] take advantage of all the other features that have been added since then, and 3] avoid the vulnerabilities that are in earlier versions of Pine and Pico. If you can't convince your system administrator to upgrade and you are using Unix Pine 3.96 or earlier, you need to follow the instructions in the penultimate section of this page. If you are using Unix Pine 4.0 through 4.05, you need to use the customized-hdrs variable and the allow-changing-from hidden feature to change your From header.
To set up a role, go to Main > Setup > Rules > Roles > Add by typing:
M S R R AYou will see a screen that looks like this:
PINE 4.63 ADD A ROLE RULE
Nickname = <NO Value Set: using "Alternate Role">
To pattern = <NO Value Set>
From pattern = <NO Value Set>
Sender pattern = <NO Value Set>
Cc pattern = <NO Value Set>
News pattern = <NO Value Set>
Subject pattern = <NO Value Set>
Recip pattern = <NO Value Set>
Partic pattern = <NO Value Set>
AllText pattern = <NO Value Set>
Score interval = <NO Value Set>
Current Folder Type =
Set Choose One
--- --------------------
( ) Any
( ) News
(*) Email
( ) Specific
Folder List = <NO Value Set>
Message is Important? =
Set Choose One
--- --------------------
(*) Don't care, always matches
( ) Yes
( ) No
Message is New? =
Set Choose One
--- --------------------
(*) Don't care, always matches
( ) Yes
( ) No
Message is Deleted? =
Set Choose One
--- --------------------
(*) Don't care, always matches
( ) Yes
( ) No
Message is Answered? =
Set Choose One
--- --------------------
(*) Don't care, always matches
( ) Yes
( ) No
Initialize settings using role : <NO Value Set>
Set From = <NO Value Set: using "default (Nancy McGough <wrong@incorrect.com>)">
Set Reply-To = <NO Value Set>
Set Fcc = <NO Value Set: using "value from fcc-name-rule">
Set LiteralSig = <NO Value Set>
Set Signature = <NO Value Set: using "default (.signature)">
Set Template = <NO Value Set>
Set Other Hdrs = <NO Value Set>
Reply Use =
Set Choose One
--- --------------------
( ) Never
(*) With confirmation
( ) Without confirmation
Forward Use =
Set Choose One
--- --------------------
( ) Never
(*) With confirmation
( ) Without confirmation
Compose Use =
Set Choose One
--- --------------------
(*) Never
( ) With confirmation
( ) Without confirmation
? Help E Exit Setup P Prev - PrevPage A Add Value % Print O OTHER CMDS C [Change Val] N Next Spc NextPage D Delete Val W WhereIs
To set up a role that Pine will (almost) always use for both mail and news messages, including when you compose a new message, reply to a message, or forward a message, you need to edit the six lines that are displayed in bold red text below.
PINE 4.63 ADD A ROLE RULE
Nickname = Always Use!
To pattern = <NO Value Set>
From pattern = <NO Value Set>
Sender pattern = <NO Value Set>
Cc pattern = <NO Value Set>
News pattern = <NO Value Set>
Subject pattern = <NO Value Set>
Recip pattern = <NO Value Set>
Partic pattern = <NO Value Set>
AllText pattern = <NO Value Set>
Score interval = <NO Value Set>
Current Folder Type =
Set Choose One
--- --------------------
(*) Any
( ) News
( ) Email
( ) Specific
Folder List = <NO Value Set>
Message is Important? =
Set Choose One
--- --------------------
(*) Don't care, always matches
( ) Yes
( ) No
Message is New? =
Set Choose One
--- --------------------
(*) Don't care, always matches
( ) Yes
( ) No
Message is Deleted? =
Set Choose One
--- --------------------
(*) Don't care, always matches
( ) Yes
( ) No
Message is Answered? =
Set Choose One
--- --------------------
(*) Don't care, always matches
( ) Yes
( ) No
Initialize settings using role : <NO Value Set>
Set From = Nancy McGough <nm-reverse-spam-filter@ii.deflexion.com>
Set Reply-To = <NO Value Set>
Set Fcc = <NO Value Set: using "value from fcc-name-rule">
Set LiteralSig = <NO Value Set>
Set Signature = <NO Value Set: using "default (.signature)">
Set Template = <NO Value Set>
Set Other Hdrs = <NO Value Set>
Reply Use =
Set Choose One
--- --------------------
( ) Never
( ) With confirmation
(*) Without confirmation
Forward Use =
Set Choose One
--- --------------------
( ) Never
( ) With confirmation
(*) Without confirmation
Compose Use =
Set Choose One
--- --------------------
( ) Never
( ) With confirmation
(*) Without confirmation
? Help E Exit Setup P Prev - PrevPage A Add Value % Print O OTHER CMDS C [Change Val] N Next Spc NextPage D Delete Val W WhereIs
You can set Nickname to be anything you like and of course you should Set From to be your From header not mine!
To exit the roles configuration screens and save your changes, type
E Y E Y
which means Exit this role (E), commit the changes (Y), Exit the roles configuration screen (E), and commit all your role changes (Y). Now, assuming this is your only role, (almost) every message you send will have the From header that you specified in your "Always Use!" role. Before you put this into production, test it by replying to, forwarding, and composing a new message and make sure that you are in fact using this From header.
To learn how to set up multiple roles and how to have Pine automatically determine which role to use depending on the context, read Pine's built-in Help files and see
Here are some tips for using roles:
pine someone@example.com+
or -;
and so that the Index-to-me Symbol Color, which is set
using Main > Setup > Kolor, and the Pine FROMORTO
and FROMORTONOTNEWS tokens, which are used to construct
the index-format on the Message Index screen, work correctly.X next
to alternate-compose-menu
in your Pine feature-list. Then, when you use the C
(Compose) command to initiate the composition of a new message, Pine
will present a menu asking if you want to compose an interrupted message,
a postponed message, a form letter, a new message using your default
role, or a new message using a (*) With confirmation
# (Role) command instead
of the C (Compose) command to initiate the
composition of a message.#) command and be prompted
about whether to compose a new message, reply to the current message,
forward the current message, or bounce forward a message, set alternate-role-menu.
For details, especially about how roles works when bouncing, see the
Pine
Help about the alternate-role-menu. Note: You need to be using Pine
4.61 or later to be able to use a role when bouncing a message. News: In Pine 4.51 and later, you can set the features disable-sender and scramble-message-id to help hide your personal private email address. In Pine 4.60 and later, you can set hide-nntp-path to help hide the hostname of your machine.
| Terminology Note |
An email message has two From addresses:
The From address in the header is in a line that begins with
From:. When a message is delivered to a mailbox, the
envelope information is often — but not
always — discarded. Depending on the message transfer
agent (MTA), the message delivery agent (MDA), and the mailbox format,
the From address in the envelope may be injected into the header
of the message in a line that begins with In this article, whenever I use the phrase “From header,” I mean the header that begins with From: (with the colon). |
Your From header tells the recipient of your message who the message is from, or who you are pretending it is from. It is a required header and it should look like one of the following.
| From Header Format | Comment | |
From: personal-name <user-id@user-domain> |
preferred | |
From: user-id@user-domain (personal-name) |
deprecated for over 25 years | |
From: user-id@user-domain |
if there's no personal-name, spam-detection tools often increase the spam probability or spam score |
The first format is preferred and is the format that Pine uses when
constructing a message. The email address in the From header is not necessarily
where a reply to a message goes. This depends on what other headers are
in the message, what messaging client the replier is using, and whether
the replier chooses to reply to the author, reply to all, or reply to
a subset of all. Here are the headers that are used — in some
clients — to determine where a reply goes.
| Reply to... | Headers Used to Determine Where Reply Goes | |
| reply to author | Reply-To or From
| |
| reply to all (email discussion group) | Mail-Followup-To or [To,
Cc, |
|
| reply to all (news discussion group) | Followup-To or Newsgroups |
When you use Pine to reply to a message, you can tell Pine to notify
you about the existence of a Reply-To header and let you
choose whether to use the Reply-To or the From
address by unsetting the feature reply-always-uses-reply-to.
This is especially useful when the Reply-To address is set
to a mailing list and you want to send a personal (private) reply to the
author. Unsetting this feature is one of my
26 favorite Pine feature settings.
There is a raging debate about the proper use of the Reply-To header, especially its use/misuse in mailing-list messages. To find out about the debate, and join in if you like, see
Mail-Followup-To (AKA MFT) is a proposed header that is
not an Internet standard and is not supported by most messaging clients,
including the militantly standards-compliant Pine. Its purpose is to help
to make email discussion groups more like news groups and encourage people
to reply to the group, while still giving the option of replying to the
author's personal Reply-To address. You can set the Mail-Followup-To
header in outgoing Pine messages by adding it to your customized-hdrs
and, optionally, your default-composer-hdrs
variables (instructions for both of these headers are below).
Then, when you compose a message, fill in this header by hand.
Another option is to create a role (see above) for each mailing list that you subscribe to and set the From, To, and Mail-Followup-To headers in the role. Here's what I use in my pine-info mailing-list role:
Set From = Nancy McGough <nm-this-address-is-valid@no.sp.am>
Set Other Hdrs = To: Pine Technical Discussion Forum <pine-info@u.washington.edu>
Mail-Followup-To: Pine Technical Discussion Forum <pine-info@u.washington.edu>
Whenever I reply to or compose a new message to the pine-info mailing
list, I use the this role. This way people who are using a client that
supports the Mail-Followup-To header, such as mutt, nmh,
or gnus, will know that I would like a reply-to-all message to be sent
to the list address.
The Mail-Followup-To header is quite controversial and
is discussed in
These days many people use a bogus From header when posting to a public forum. The intended goal is to prevent harvesters of email addresses from getting valid email addresses to add to junk mailing lists. But doing this infuriates people -- for example, me -- who try to send a legitimate response to your post. My advice is to never send a message that has a bogus From header. Instead, I recommend that you get an alternate email address (discussed below) that you use for public postings and then use this address, along with filters, to help you separate spam from non-spam.
Another way to make people mad at you is to use someone else's email address in your From header. If you do this (forgery), even as a joke, the fury of the Net may be unleashed on you. You could be mail bombed, subscribed to lots of mailing lists you don't want to be on, lose your account, and other unpleasant things.
Do not underestimate the power of the people who are trying to maintain email address integrity on the Net!
If you insist on using a bogus From header, use an address that does not now exist and will never exist in the future. For example, you could use...
.invalid, which is a reserved
top-level domain that is discussed on this
GNKSA (The Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval) page and in RFC
2606, Reserved Top Level DNS Names.<>).Another option is to use a me@privacy.net stealth address, which auto-replies to any email sent to it with a message that says: “The user who provided this address did not want you to have his/her e-mail address in an effort to try to prevent receiving unwanted e-mail and/or keep their identity private.”
For more about this, see these comp.mail.pine threads:
Good reasons for changing your From header include
As I discuss above in Do Not Use a Forged or Bogus From Header, I recommend that you use alternate email addresses in public places, such as on your web site and when you post to a public discussion group. And then use filters, along with these addresses, to help you separate spam from non-spam. There are many reasonably-priced and free email accounts that you can use for this purpose. If you use a service that supports IMAP, you can use Pine to read and process messages sent to that account.
| IMAP
service providers are now listed on a separate page |
As I discuss above, Pine constructs a From header that looks like this:
From: personal-name <user-id@user-domain>
Depending on your needs, you may be able to specify your default From
header using the personal-name and the user-domain
(and in PC-Pine, the user-id) variables or you might
need to use the allow-changing-from feature and the customized-hdrs
variable. These are described below.
In Unix Pine, your personal-name defaults to the full
name that is specified in your /etc/passwd entry. On
many Unix systems you can change your full name by using the chfn
(change finger) command.
Your user-id defaults to your login name and your user-domain
defaults to either the name of the machine that you are logged on
to or to the default user-domain that your system administer
specified.
In Unix Pine, you can change your personal-name or user-domain
by setting these variables in the Pine Setup Configuration screen.
You can not set the user-id variable in Unix Pine.
In PC-Pine, you set all three of these variables — personal-name,
user-id, and user-domain — in the Pine
configuration screen.
If you are using Unix Pine version 4.0 to version 4.21 and you need
to change your default user-id, you need to add allow-changing-from
to your feature-list.
This is a hidden feature and does not show up in the Pine configuration
screen. To set it, you need to directly edit your pinerc file (which
defaults to .pinerc in Unix pine and pinerc
in PC-Pine). There must be a comma between features in your feature-list
and there cannot be any blank lines. For example, here's the top and
bottom of my feature-list:
feature-list=expose-hidden-config,
enable-aggregate-command-set,
enable-flag-cmd,
:
:
enable-msg-view-urls,
enable-msg-view-web-hostnames,
allow-changing-from
| Important |
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In addition to adding allow-changing-from to your feature-list,
you need to specify your default From address in the
customized-hdrs
variable. Edit this variable by using either Pine's Setup Configuration
screen or by directly editing your pinerc. Here's an example of what
this variable will look like in your pinerc:
customized-hdrs=From: AnyPersonalName <AnyUserID@AnyDomain>, Organization: Your Company Name and URL
Only non-blank headers that are in your customized-hdrs list will be
included in your outgoing messages. If you want to view, and possibly
edit, these headers when you are composing a message, you need to either
type ^R (view rich headers) or include these headers in your
default-composer-hdrs. The default-composer-hdrs
variable is discussed in the next section.
If you use more than one From header, you will probably
want to make the one you use the most frequently your default and
then specify your alternate From header on the fly. The two ways to
do this are 1) to directly edit your From header when you are composing
a message or 2) to set up the alternate From header as part of one
of your alternate roles. These are discussed below.
To view your From header -- and possibly edit it -- while you are
composing a message, add the hidden feature allow-changing-from
to your feature list and add From to your default-composer-hdrs
variable. For example, here's what I use for my default-composer-hdrs:
default-composer-hdrs=From, Lcc, Attchmnt, Organization, Fcc, Newsgroups, To, Cc, Bcc, Subject
These are the headers that will be displayed when you are composing a message. You can view these, along with other headers, by by typing ^R to view rich headers. You can edit any of these headers while you are composing a message.
| Tip |
Add each of your alternate |
Starting with Pine 4.10, you can use a role to compose a message that uses an alternate Fcc, Signature, Template, From, Reply-To, and other headers. To change your From header using a role, you do not need to set the allow-changing-from hidden feature. I describe how to set up a role at the top of this page.
Before Pine 4.0 it was much harder to change your From header. Details are below.
customized-hdrs=From: AnyPersonalName <AnyUserID@AnyDomain>
default-composer-hdrs=From:
#define ALLOW_CHANGING_FROMwhich is in the file pine/osdep/os-XXX.h, where XXX is an abbreviation for the operating system (e.g., `sol' for Solaris).
From: personal-name <user-id@user-domain>With this technique you are not able to edit your From header on the fly.
personal-name="" user-id="" user-domain=""Each time you start to compose a message, you will be prompted for these three variables.
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Changing Your From Header in Pine |
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