[Asrg] MUA/Operator reporting address (was Re: Adding a spam button to MUAs)

[Dave CROCKER <[e-mail]>]

On 2/5/2010 12:01 PM, Chris Lewis wrote:
> Steve Atkins wrote:
>> Of those, the only thing that's actually associated with the inbound
>> mailbox is the incoming mail server.
>
> As you suggest, key it to "feedback@feedback.<incoming server name>".

This covers 3 specific choices, each of which ought to get a bit of discussion.


1. Mailbox name

There is an official list of required/standard email addresses:

    <http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2142.txt>

We should make this exercise be an extension to that.  Offhand, 'feedback' 
strikes me as too generic, for what is actually a pretty specific function.

The existing, relevant reserved mailbox string is 'abuse'.  Should this new one 
be related to it?


2. Sub-domain

Why have a sub-domain?  And to the extent one is needed, why not use the 
developing convention of an underscore name, such as _report.<domain>?

The address to be used is really an 'attribute' of the main domain, and the 
underscore convention has developed as a way of defining additional attributes 
for a domain name.  In addition, the naming convention does not run the risk of 
colliding with an existing use of sub-domains.


3. Domain.

Clients currently have two domains to draw from, posting domain and pickup 
domain.  Choosing incoming probably /is/ best, because that's the place that 
handed the user the problem message and therefore it's the place that ought to 
provide the information about where to report problems.


>> The charm of using an MX record to configure this is that the MUA can
>> do an MX lookup to know whether to show or hide the button. That's
>> pretty clean, and if I were coding an MUA I'd be happy to do it that
>> way, but it's not necessarily a _trivial_ thing to add to a codebase,
>> especially via plugin, so it's worth considering.
>
>  From the perspective of code base, checking for an A record for
> "feedback.<incoming server name>" would be simpler. The MTA doesn't need
> to use DNS to deliver, and you really don't want the MUA to be
> establishing direct connections anyway. Fixed route to whereever in the
> MTA.

Just to check:  The choice between using an A or an MX is an optimization, 
rather than strategic, yes?  That is, either is sufficient to the task, so a 
debate is about better?

d/
-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net