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How do References arise in the message header?

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JoMarvel
JoMarvel
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Please see message illustrated. It was sent, appeared in the sender's Sent folder, but it didn't arrive with the recipient and there was no delivery-failure message. I was asked to send it from another machine (mine) and it was successfully received. The headers were significantly different in two respects: 1. X-Mozilla-status was 0001 in my successfully sent message. 2. In mine there was only one Reference (<...>@lake48.net). I am therefore suspicious of the References, but I don't know how they arise. The first two illustrated are from an old Freeserve email address which ceased to operate earlier this year. Questions: 1. Where do References come from - how do they arise? 2. What can we do to avoid this happening again? NB both machines use Thunderbird for emails. 3. Supplementary - I couldn't find anything useful about Mozilla statuses or header references in Mozilla Help, so I couldn't interpret the information given - is there a document available online that goes into more detail than the Help system does?

Please see message illustrated. It was sent, appeared in the sender's Sent folder, but it didn't arrive with the recipient and there was no delivery-failure message. I was asked to send it from another machine (mine) and it was successfully received. The headers were significantly different in two respects: 1. X-Mozilla-status was 0001 in my successfully sent message. 2. In mine there was only one Reference (<...>@lake48.net). I am therefore suspicious of the References, but I don't know how they arise. The first two illustrated are from an old Freeserve email address which ceased to operate earlier this year. Questions: 1. Where do References come from - how do they arise? 2. What can we do to avoid this happening again? NB both machines use Thunderbird for emails. 3. Supplementary - I couldn't find anything useful about Mozilla statuses or header references in Mozilla Help, so I couldn't interpret the information given - is there a document available online that goes into more detail than the Help system does?
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Matt
Matt
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first lesson in mail headers. Anything starting with a X- is not a mail header as such, in that it has nothing to do with the transmission of the email from point A to point B.

Things like x-mozillastatus and x-mozilla-statius are added by Thunderbird to signify the status of the email with in the program. Lots of anti virus programs add X- header indicating they scanned the email. Yahoo adds x- headers with things like the originating IP address for mail sent from their web mail and the Yahoo Id of the user who sent the mail.

Each email has a Message-ID: header. This is generated as part of the transmission through the SMTP server.

Now the references header, although not universally respected or updated is created and updated using those Message-id details.

(I am simplifying the message id greatly) So you send me an email with the message id of Mine1. I click reply or forward. The message id header is copied to the References header and a new message id is (mine2) created to supposedly uniquely identify this message. The next recipient clicks forward and the message id created at the previous step (mine1 is added to the references section of the message. So it not looks like Mine1, Mine2.

As a message travels from user to user clicking forward or reply the references section gets longer and longer. What this means it that of a message follows a circular route through say 10 people and makes it's way back to you. Thunderbird will be able to place your original sent item in a conversation with the perhaps unrecognizable mail that arrives. It also allow for the threading of messages and using the relative locations of items in the references header Thunderbird can place replied and mails back and forth in a thread into the correct threaded parts. So you can work out who or what is the nest in that part of the thread.

You are assuming message headers are something that Mozilla or any mail client has control over. They do not. They are actually standardized items and are described in the relevant RFC. See https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4021#section-2.1.10 (I think it is the current one for headers)

The x-mozilla statuses are not ever going to be discussed in the knowledge base. You will find some information on blogs and wiki pages, some of it going back 10 years as they have never changed since the days of netscape and the suite. There is to the best of my knowledge an oficial list of which codes mean what, although it is obviously defined somewhere in the code.

Basically Those headers store Thunderbird status information and contain no information that is typically usable by the user directly. for an example. x-mozilla-status=1 means the message is read Stats 0 is unread. status 8 mean is is deleted as far as the user is concerned.

I do not follow " What can we do to avoid this happening again? NB both machines use Thunderbird for emails. " you have but a single question listed under your jomarvel account (this question) so I have no idea what you are talking about really. See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/user/JoMarvel