Manual:$wgUserEmailUseReplyTo

Email settings: $wgUserEmailUseReplyTo
Set to true to put the sending user's email in a Reply-To header instead of From.
Introduced in version:	1.12.0 (r30014)
Removed in version:	Still in use
Allowed values:	(boolean)
Default value:	true (1.29+) false (1.12-1.28)
Other settings: Alphabetical | By function

Details

If $wgUserEmailUseReplyTo is set to true, user-to-user emails will contain the email address of the sending user in a Reply-To: header only, instead of directly in the From: line. Emails will appear to come from $wgPasswordSender , but replies will be sent to the email address of the user sending the user-to-user email.

It may be clean-looking and convenient to place the sending user's email address in the From: line. But there are several reasons why setting of 'false' may not be desired. They are:

• Putting the sending user's email address in the From: line doesn't as clearly differentiate user-to-user email (an email sent via the wiki) from directly sent messages (emails sent from an email client).
• Another concern is that some mailers (like sSMTP) will use the From: address as the SMTP envelope sender (the generator of the email message). This behavior can cause email messages to be penalized for SPF violations (since the wiki server isn't authorized to send messages on behalf of other domains) e.g. anyuser@example.com is not authorized to send mail on example.org domain.
• MediaWiki installations on a shared server may fail to send user-to-user email due to spam prevention by disabling open mail relaying.

Setting to true may create a privacy issue, as bounces containing the recipient's email address may get returned to the server's sending user email address.