Re: [Asrg] Spammer responses to SPF

On Mon, Jun 16, 2003 at 03:04:47PM -0700, Scott Nelson wrote:
> I don't think so.  First, only people who don't understand what
> empty envelope sender means will block them all.  
> I'm guessing that's a majority of the end users,
> but not a significant fraction of the people who make the
> mail system work.

*lol*
Have you ever been on a MTA mailing list?
There are some ten messages a week "how can I block <> for MTA xyz".
I see about 30-40 each day that generate double bounces because "empty
senders are not allowed".

> Spam with an empty envelope isn't ever going to be effective, 
> since most will filter it out.  Also, more effective blocking
> of "empties" that aren't DSNs is possible.  We just don't do it
> (yet) because there isn't much call for it.   For example,
> only accepting a standardized bounce (i.e. one following RFC 1894) 
> would stop most of the spam but only a tiny fraction of the real DSNs.

How about all the "robots" or CR systems that send their mails with
empty envelope senders, because they don't want an answer if the
challenge was faked. How about all the autoresponders?
There are lots of valid emails with empty envelopes.

> is limited to that state.  So we lose some reliability
> (because a few real DSNs will be discarded) but we'd still have
> enough to keep the system mostly reliable.

Sorry, I don't think it's reliable if bounces get lost. Just like
discarding spam qualified emails automatically is .. hmmm .. unwise,
because if it's a false classification the sender has no chance to get
informed what happend. At times where email is considered a trustworthy
medium this is unacceptable.

> This may seem a trivial distinction, but I think it's important.
> We aren't facing an enemy army, with a cohesive leadership, 
> it's more like a thousand guerrillas.

And I surely don't stop aguing that a TXT record with the contents
"MAILSERVER" in reverse DNS would be much faster and easier deployed
and effective than RMX or companions. And it would save us from
accepting email from all the broken workstations, homecomputers, open
proxies and virus infected hosts that never had been intended to be a
mailserver.

And I yet have to see that RMX or companions save us from the problem
to order some hundred 9nerauhi3250780asd.com type domains, use short
TTLs (5-10 seconds) and add RMX records for the open relays that are
abused right now. The next thing surely will be that TTLs < 86400 for
RMX records are forbidden ...

Yeah I know, reverse DNS is lame.

	\Maex

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