131897 - Add "From" to addressing pane

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 87987

(MailNews Core :: Composition, enhancement)

Description

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Some users have their own (sub)domain name and generate email addresses on the
fly to track, what is being done with the addresses they give out to various
entities (like Amazon, Usenet etc.), esp. via webforms. When they communicate
with that entiry per email, they want to use that address as From in the email.

Other users have so many so rarely used addresses that they don't want to create
an account for each of them (I currently have about 20 accounts and still not
all my addresses covered).

It would be useful to specify a certain From address to be used not by the
read-only dropdown, but by a textfield which can be edited right in the
composer. The addressing pane normally used for recipients offers itself, for
code reuse reasons (e.g. can autocomplete to (my own) addresses in my address book).

I propose the following UI:
In the From dropdown, add a new special item "Custom" (or other wording). That
enables a "From" item in the header type dropdown in the addressing pane (under
"To", "cc", "bcc" etc.), which is otherwise invisible (not to confuse normal
users). It also creates a new row in that addressing pane, preselected to "From"
and maybe (!) the focus sat to it.

Security considerations:
I am aware that this makes forging emails much easier, esp. with autocomplete to
(all) existing addresbook entries.
It is not a new threat, however, because forging email addresses is already
trivial - you can create an account with an arbitary email address in Mozilla,
and pretty much all mails allow you to do similar.
Maybe this feature makes this existing threat even more widely known, which is a
good thing. Not many people are aware that emails can be forged that easily and
may trust the From line in incoming emails. I have even seen ISPs (jfax for
example) who use the From address for accounting (i.e. any fax sent as email to
a certain mail server with a customer email address as From is sent as fax and
billed to that customer). Such a feature may place an end to that insecurity.

Comment 1

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

-->varada

Comment 2

[Alex Bishop]

Related, but not the same as, bug 44863.

Comment 3

[André Langhorst]

this is exactly what I say in bug 120108
adding a "Custom..." Field
deactivating it by default (maybe pref, ini enabled)

I fear there wouldn't be *that* awareness arising having this feature on by
default furthermore I guess all kind of kiddies would start sending messages for
their parents :)

Comment 4

[André Langhorst]

*** Bug 120108 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 5

[Michael Klose]

I agree, make this option available (I really really really need it), but hide
it somewhere really deep so that the functionality isn't misused much.

But there should be a way of adding a limited amount of e-mail address per
identity  as according to bug #44863. 

But this here would be a killer feature, because I really do make up new e-mail
addresses every timne I order something online or register somewhere so I know
where the mail is coming from.

The real reason I want #44863 is because I have now combined 4 pop3 accounts
into one big imap account.

Comment 6

[Jonas Jørgensen]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 87987 ***

Comment 7

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

v