Re: [Asrg] Where to send the ARF report, was Adding a spam button to MUAs

John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> Sat, 06 February 2010 00:48 UTC

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Date: Sat, 06 Feb 2010 00:49:15 -0000
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From: John Levine <johnl@taugh.com>
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Subject: Re: [Asrg] Where to send the ARF report, was Adding a spam button to MUAs
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>How does the MUA autodiscover "domain.com", though, so as to create
 "feedback@feedback.domain.com"?

>The only setting that the MUA is likely to have access to is the name
>of the IMAP or POP3 server. As IMAP and POP3 are not name-based, the
>entry there could easily be domain.com, mail.domain.com,
>imap.domain.com or pop.domain.com or smtp.domain.com or even
>www.domain.com.

You know, this is the sort of thing that SRV records were invented to
do.

If the name of the POP or IMAP server is www.domain.com, you do a SRV
lookup and find:

 _arf._tcp.www.domain.com SRV 0 0 25 collectreports.biz

So, using a fixed mailbox name, the address is
feedback@collectreports.biz.  If there's no SRV record, they aren't
prepared to accept reports.

I'm not thrilled about this, since this enshrines the false assumption
that the only ways to pick up mail are POP and IMAP, but at least it
doesn't break anything that works now.

The other reason I'm not thrilled about it is that it assumes that an
MUA remembers where it found each message.  It's not unusual for
people to have multiple POP accounts, and to dump everything into one
local inbox.  There's no need to remember the source of each message,
so I wouldn't want to assume the MUA does so.  That's why I still
prefer something like a note in the Auth-results: header to tell you
where to send the report.  Belt-and-suspenders types might want to add
a SRV lookup to that to deter random hostile misdirection.

R's,
John