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Re: [ietf-smtp] Email explained from first principles

John R Levine <johnl@taugh.com> Tue, 25 May 2021 01:49 UTC

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Date: Mon, 24 May 2021 21:49:19 -0400
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From: John R Levine <johnl@taugh.com>
To: Dave Crocker <dcrocker@bbiw.net>, ietf-smtp@ietf.org
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Subject: Re: [ietf-smtp] Email explained from first principles
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On Mon, 24 May 2021, Dave Crocker wrote:
> That is, the main motivation for ARC is to provide a plausible basis for 
> paying attention to DMARC, even when its underlying authentication mechanism 
> are broken by the time they show up at the receiver.

Yes. that's a better way to put it.

I asked somone from a Large Mail Provider that since they know where the 
mailing lists are, why not just whitelist them.  The answer was that a lot 
of spam leaks through lists, since they typically just check that the 
From: address is a subscriber.  ARC lets them look back and see if the 
message was DMARC aligned when it arrived at the mailing list and do the 
filtering that the mailing list didn't.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Taughannock Networks, Trumansburg NY
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

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