Subject: Re: bug#58472: [PATCH] Make `message-unique-id' less prone to collisions

From: Stefan Kangas <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2022 12:10:19 +0000

Lars Ingebrigtsen <[email-masked]> writes:

> It's documented to be this way, though?

Hmm, right (from `(message) News Headers'):

    ‘Message-ID’
         This required header will be generated by Message.  A unique ID
         will be created based on the date, time, user name (for the local
         part) and the domain part.

Actually, the user name is currently only used on MS-DOS, AFAICT.
So I guess the documentation is already wrong?

> Well, since it is "87" on most machines, it's not very leaky.  😀

Until your name is "88", of course.  ;-(

> That is, we've got tricks like being able to score on References based
> on your Message-ID to score up threads you've been a part of, etc.

It seems flaky to use it for such scoring purposes though, as almost
everyone is named "87"...  Do we really have code that does that?

Should we care?