CODEWITHSUNDEEP
emailheader
supmethods
supmethods

Reputation: 555

Understanding email headers: x-beenthere and x field

I'd like to understand more about the email headers.

After looking at one of the emails, I found the field had this entry "x-BeenThere" in the header. What does this mean?

Also I noticed some "x" fields seem like they're custom set fields, is this the case with some emails?

Upvotes: 11

Views: 8544

Answers (1)

Barmar
Barmar

Reputation: 781716

The X-BeenThere header is used by mailing list software to detect loops. Each time a message passes through a listserve, it adds its address to the header. If an incoming message already contains its address in the header, it means the message is looping (one of the recipients is forwarding their email to the list) and it's dropped.

Upvotes: 22

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