<P> The addresses found in the header fields of an email message are not directly used by mail exchangers to deliver the message . An email message also contains a message envelope that contains the information for mail routing . While envelope and header addresses may be equal, forged email addresses are often seen in spam, phishing, and many other Internet - based scams . This has led to several initiatives which aim to make such forgeries easier to spot . </P> <P> To indicate the message recipient, an email address also may have an associated display name for the recipient, which is followed by the address specification surrounded by angled brackets, for example: John Smith <john.smith@example.org>. </P> <P> Earlier forms of email addresses on other networks than the Internet included other notations, such as that required by X. 400, and the UUCP bang path notation, in which the address was given in the form of a sequence of computers through which the message should be relayed . This was widely used for several years, but was superseded by the Internet standards promulgated by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). </P> <P> The format of email addresses is local-part@domain where the local part may be up to 64 characters long and the domain may have a maximum of 255 characters . The formal definitions are in RFC 5322 (sections 3.2. 3 and 3.4. 1) and RFC 5321--with a more readable form given in the informational RFC 3696 and the associated errata . Note that unlike the syntax of RFC 1034 and RFC 1035, there is no trailing period in the domain name . </P>

Who put the @ symbol in email addresses