Re: [Shutup] [ietf-smtp] Proposed Charter for the "SMTP Headers Unhealthy To User Privacy" WG (fwd)

[Chris Lewis <[e-mail]>]

On 12/01/2015 04:29 PM, Ted Lemon wrote:
> Tuesday, Dec 1, 2015 4:10 PM Richard Clayton wrote:
>> If you want to have very limited data in your email header fields then
>> you should look at the systems that you operate yourself and clean up
>> the information at that point. You'll probably get a poorer delivery
>> experience when sending to MAGY and others -- but that's your tradeoff.
>
> Received: from localhost (ietfa.amsl.com [127.0.0.1]) by ietfa.amsl.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 01DDB1B2F31; Tue, 1 Dec 2015 11:10:08 -0800 (PST)
> Received: from mail.ietf.org ([4.31.198.44]) by localhost (ietfa.amsl.com [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id BPlsDC_M90ws; Tue, 1 Dec 2015 11:10:06 -0800 (PST)
> Received: from fugue.com (mail-2.fugue.com [IPv6:2a01:7e01::f03c:91ff:fee4:ad68]) by ietfa.amsl.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id CDD061AD481; Tue, 1 Dec 2015 11:10:05 -0800 (PST)
>
> Here are the Received: headers from the previous message I sent to the list.   As you can see, there is no Received header at all for the submit server.   My submit server doesn't add one, because there's no good reason to.   I have had zero issues with mail I send not being delivered to any of the big providers.   When I do have issues, the issues I have tend to be really small servers (typically IETF participants who, like me, run their own mail servers) that have all sorts of exciting steampunk gadgets filtering spam.
>
> The issues that I have tend to be that mail to those users is delayed, not that it never arrives.   It's their choice to set up greylisting, and slowing down the reply rate for discussions like this isn't a bad thing, so I really wouldn't describe this as a "poorer delivery experience."

The inevitable result is your mail server is treated no differently than 
grandma's PC.

When your cat's litter box gets infected with, say, cutwail, spewing 
gazillions of copies of randomized "come do X to my Y!" exhortations, 
you're not giving the receiver (ML or ad-hoc) very much to distinguish 
between that and your pearls of wisdom.

Hence your entire infrastructure gets blocked, you end up annoyed, the 
cat ain't admitting anything, and nothing gets fixed very quickly.

Also remember that at scale, you CANNOT afford to talk to everybody who 
has trouble with email.  Not when the loaded labor rate of just one 
support call dwarfs the income you make with the associated customer.

If you have to get noticed by a human being, you're already cost them 
more than they'll make.

Of course many systems operate this way without much difficulty. 
Because they are either already clean or expend the effort to remain 
clean.  Which is fine until that one day when something goes wrong.