On Fri, 4 Oct 2013 20:25:08 -0400, Rich Greenberg <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Is "*" a valid character to be a part of an email address?  I don't
>think so.

Yes it is and has been at least since RFC 822 (1982) and probably earlier.

Current standard is RFC 5322 (2008) which says (Sect 3.4.1):

   addr-spec       =   local-part "@" domain

   local-part      =   dot-atom / quoted-string / obs-local-part

(local part or left of @ is in question here as that is where '*' occur) Sect
3.2.4 discusses quoted-strings

   quoted-string   =   [CFWS]
                       DQUOTE *([FWS] qcontent) [FWS] DQUOTE
                       [CFWS]

   qcontent        =   qtext / quoted-pair

   qtext           =   %d33 /             ; Printable US-ASCII
                       %d35-91 /          ;  characters not including
                       %d93-126 /         ;  "\" or the quote character
                       obs-qtext

another way to look at it is: (Section 3.2.3)

   atext           =   ALPHA / DIGIT /    ; Printable US-ASCII
                       "!" / "#" /        ;  characters not including
                       "$" / "%" /        ;  specials.  Used for atoms.
                       "&" / "'" /
                       "*" / "+" /
                       "-" / "/" /
                       "=" / "?" /
                       "Ø" / "_" /
                       "`" / "{" /
                       "|" / "}" /
                       "~"

   (qtext is built from atoms)

   specials        =   "(" / ")" /        ; Special characters that do
                       "<" / ">" /        ;  not appear in atext
                       "[" / "]" /
                       ":" / ";" /
                       "@" / "\" /
                       "," / "." /
                       DQUOTE

See specifically RFC 5322 Sections: 3.2.3, 3.2.4, 3.2.5, 3.4, and 3.4.1


The issue of course is that the receiving mail server is attempting lookup on
the recipient (To:) address like [log in to unmask] which it will find in
LDAP and thus allow the message to be received and delivered.  The lookup will
never find
owner-drexel-official-all-l*matthew*-kaminsky**DREXEL*[log in to unmask] 
as a lookup value because this address will never exist in LDAP.

LISTSERV return-path addresses (for reporting of non-delivery) will always
begin with owner-(something)@server.name.  The (something) will always be
either the LISTNAME or the special phrase NOLIST when the source is a non-list
mailing (such as from LISTSERV Maestro).  After that is the 'encoded'
recipient address as mailed to in the special PROBE format.  LISTSERV knows
how to disect PROBE format addresses and turn that into 'bounce' information
usable by LISTSERV.

So, the way to make this work properly, is wite a special handling rule in
your incoming mail filter such that 1) if the address begins with "owner-" and
2) the domain part is "LISTS.drexel.edu", do not attempt LDAP validation, but
send the mail onwards to LISTSERV and let it take care of the msg.

Next you will worry that some spammers will send spam mail to
"owner-(something)@server.name".  They do, but their mail is not in a bounce
report format (usually) so LISTSERV may discard it or may forward particularly
doubtful msgs to an Administrator address.  But it will not harm LISTSERV and
it will not be sent out to any list.

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