Re: Mail is worse than everything except all the alternatives, was Service outages planned for April 25

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

On 4/28/22 18:11, John Levine wrote:

> It appears that Keith Moore  <[e-mail]> said:
>> Also, why should it be a dark art to have legitimate email successfully
>> delivered?
> Because spammers try very hard to make their mail look like legitimate
> mail, and unlike you, they have a financial incentive to figure out
> and evade the filters.
>
> It may not seem fair, but it's reality. I would like to be able to set
> up my new nice mail server and send my nice mail without having to do
> SPF and DKIM and DMARC and MTA-STS and TLSA and IP reputation and
> while I am waiting I would also like a pony.

It's generally been my experience that people say "it's reality" in the 
same way that people sometimes say "it is clear that..." ... i.e. when 
they can't actually justify what they're saying, or they don't have the 
imagination to see how things could be different, or maybe, when they 
have an interest in maintaining the status quo.  It's a red flag, an 
anti-pattern.

But you didn't actually answer my question.   Because getting your mail 
delivered is not just a matter of doing SPF and DKIM etc., it's black 
magic.   It's jumping through hoops that most people don't know exist, 
and the people who impose those hoops want to keep them somewhat 
secret... until they can impose more hoops.

Which is great if you're in the hoop selling business I guess.

It's a deplorable situation, and IETF shouldn't be propping it up.

Keith