Re: SPF = Sender Policy Framework

From: Randolf Richardson (rr_at_8x.ca)
Date: 09/21/04 

Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 02:31:20 GMT

"Alexander Skwar <from@alexander.skwar.name>" wrote in
news.admin.net-abuse.email:

> Randolf Richardson wrote:
[sNip - sensible commentary]
>> It's really a matter of allowing people to protect others' privacy, and
>> to take this option away from end users would set a very bad precedent.
>
> You misunderstood him. Instead of writing a mail which has

            I think you may be correct (thanks for pointing this out).

> To: me@adress.is.invalid
>
> He wants every mail to have
>
> To: him@adress.is.not.invalid
>
> Now, to protect the privacy, this might mean, that every mail has
> just one recipient, which would increase the number of mails that

            Additional cost (time & money) to normal users. This is not good.

> have to be sent by a spammer. Right now, with Bcc:, a spammer only
> has to deliver 1 (one) mail and have the MTA deliver it to every
> "Bcc adress". With no bcc, the spammer would need to deliver as
> many mails as there are recipients.

            Obviously it won't help to put a stop to spam once all the spammers
have updated their spamware, thus making it a wasted effort in this regard.

            But all this begs the question "what's the real reason someone would
want to change the way SMTP headers used in this way?" I suspect the
answer may be that the SMTP server being used doesn't include the real
recipient information in either an "X-Envelope-To:" or a "Received:" SMTP
header, and so they're unable to filter based on the real recipient eMail
address.

            I've gotten business from customers with wildcard accounts who weren't
happy with their ISPs because they couldn't determine which recipients to
forward messages to for a particular eMail list that a number of their
users signed up for. After they switched to my system, which injects an
"X-Envelope-To: someone@example.com" SMTP header, their problem was solved.

            One of my guesses would be that the person asking for this is in a
similar predicament, and they're trying to find an easy fix for it (easy
for them, as far as they're concerned anyway). 

-- 
Randolf Richardson, pro-active spam fighter - rr@8x.ca
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Please do not eMail me directly when responding to my
postings in the newsgroups.
Sending eMail to other SMTP servers is a privilege.

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