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Glossary · Message format

Delivered-To header

A header recording the address a message was actually delivered to, added by the receiving system at each delivery step, which helps where forwarding or aliases are involved.

What it means

Once a message is stored its envelope recipient is lost unless something records it, and Delivered-To does that. RFC 9228, published as an Experimental RFC in April 2022, documents the field and notes that ad hoc use of it dates back to the 1990s, mainly for loop detection. A message forwarded through several addresses can carry several, one per delivery step.

For senders checking a test message, Delivered-To shows which address on the receiving side the message actually landed in, which helps when a seed address forwards to another mailbox. RFC 9228 also points out the privacy cost: the field can reveal internal or forwarding addresses of the recipient.

Example

Delivered-To: ana@example.net

Sources

What this definition rests on. The wording is ours; the facts are theirs.

All 432 terms in the glossaryThe wiki: blocklists and bounce codes

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