Re: What I've been wondering about the DMARC problem

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

On 16/04/2014 03:49, Dave Crocker wrote:
> On 4/14/2014 6:45 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>> I thought that standard operating procedure in the IT industry
>> was: if you roll something out and it causes serious breakage to
>> some of your users, you roll it back as soon as possible.
>>
>> Why hasn't Yahoo rolled back its 'reject' policy by now?
> 
> 
> As the most-recent public statement from Yahoo, this might have some
> tidbits in it that are relevant to your question:
> 
> 
> 
> http://yahoo.tumblr.com/post/82426971544/an-update-on-our-dmarc-policy-to-protect-our-users

It serves to explain their obduracy but this really annoys me:

> There is a regrettable, short-term impact to our more aggressive position on DMARC. Many legitimate emails sent on behalf of Yahoo Mail customers from third parties are also being rejected. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Why do they assert that it's a *short-term* impact? There's no clean fix, as
the discussion here has shown. And doesn't that "any" in "any inconvenience"
make you grind your teeth? We know that it's caused great inconvenience.

And this:

> We know there are about 30,000 affected email sending services, but we also know that the change needed to support our new DMARC policy is important and not terribly  difficult to implement. 

"not terribly  difficult to implement"? From what list admins are telling us,
that is simply untrue.

>  We have detailed the changes we are requiring here.

"requiring"?? Who are Yahoo to _require_ changes from 30000 third parties?

The mailman fix is worse than the disease. I think the .INVALID fix is
much better, because Reply-all will still work.

    Brian