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Re: [ietf-smtp] EHLO domain validation requirement in RFC 5321

John R Levine <johnl@taugh.com> Sun, 27 September 2020 15:40 UTC

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Date: Sun, 27 Sep 2020 11:40:27 -0400
Message-ID: <46d012a7-f938-741b-95dc-23d37a26cb39@taugh.com>
From: John R Levine <johnl@taugh.com>
To: Keith Moore <moore@network-heretics.com>, ietf-smtp@ietf.org
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Subject: Re: [ietf-smtp] EHLO domain validation requirement in RFC 5321
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> I would say instead that because some subset of inbound MTAs do EHLO 
> verification, "real mail servers" (i.e. those which manage to continue to 
> deliver mail with some reliability) are forced to have static IPv4 source 
> addresses for which PTR lookup results match EHLO arguments.

No, we've observed in practice that hosts that don't have matching PTRs 
are spambots.

>> Anything that comes from a dynamic or NAT pool is invariably spam from a 
>> botnet.
>
> No, because nobody is looking that closely.

Sorry, but you're just wrong.  We absolutely look that closely.  I know 
people who maintain pools of patterns to recognize dynamic pool rDNS which 
lots of people use in their spam scoring.

It would be nice if mail still worked the way it did 30 years ago, but 
that was most definitely then, and this is now.

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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